Color Name Finder
The feature “Color Name Finder” provides the most common names for a color. It finds color names for 3 types of input:
- Color name from an image or a photo
- Color name from a hex or an RGB code
- Color name from a color picker
Use the button to select and load your image.
Once the image is loaded, clicking on the image areas will initiate the color name identification.
Since lighting conditions strongly affect the colors in an image, it is recommended to take pictures in natural light to obtain the most representative color names.
The ArtyClick Color Name Finder can be used to find color names from the hex or RGB color codes. The following color codes are supported:
- Hex (e.g. “#FF0000” or “#FFF”)
- RGB (e.g. “RGB(255,0,0)”)
The supported RGB codes correspond to the 24-bit system where each component ranges between 0 and 255 (8-bit encoding).
Color names are provided by the comprehensive ArtyClick Color Dictionary with over 1,700 most common color names.
The color match score represents the similarity between the selected color and the most similar color from the dictionary. It ranges between 0% and 100%, with 100% being a perfect match; most matches are greater than 95% thanks to the high density of the used color dictionary.
Each color belongs to one of the 8 basic hues:
- Red
- Orange
- Yellow
- Green
- Cyan (turquoise or aqua)
- Blue
- Purple (violet)
- Magenta (bright pink)
More complex hues can be described as a composition of two hues, one as the primary and one as the secondary hue. For example, “orangy red” describes a hue that is red with a hint of orange (red is primary and orange is secondary).
Only combinations of subsequent hues (as listed above) are possible. For example, there is a “blueish purple”, but there is no “yellowish purple”. There are only 2 hues that are occasionally skipped or ignored when describing complex hues: cyan and magenta. For example, instead of referencing cyan, the notion of a “greenish blue” may be used.
The color intensity is described using one of 7 levels (ordered from the most to the least saturated):
- Vibrant
- Moderate
- Medium
- Pastel
- Pale
- Almost none
- None
The intensity is inversely proportional to the amount of grey in a color. Vibrant colors are pure and only exhibit limited amounts of grey, while pastel and pale colors are diluted with grey and are less poppy. Vibrant colors are usually used for setting accents, while pastel and pale colors often appear in the background or in unprocessed photos.
Give Your Color An Identity
Why Naming a Color
Most of us are familiar with situations when we need to describe a color, but we can’t find the right words. So the peachy pink and the pastel magenta become the same color under the pseudonym of pink. Communicating colors is challenging since broad descriptions interfere with personal associations, and this occasionally leads to color misinterpretation.
There are also times when we are not sure about a particular color. Is the shirt blue or green? Are the floor tiles of a purple or of an orange hue? Finding the name solves that problem.
When using color in design, it is also important to consider what emotions different colors evoke. Finding the color name can help as it often reveals the most common associations with that color.
Another use-case in design is when a digital display’s settings need to be checked on how the displayed colors are presented. Double-checking the color names can help to ensure that the colors used on that display will also be interpreted by the audience as intended.
The ArtyClick feature “Color Name Finder” helps us to navigate in the world of 10 million colors that our eyes are capable of distinguishing. It provides the most common yet sophisticated color names from a dictionary with over 1,750 curated records (go to ArtyClick Color Dictionary for more details).
Traditionally, colors are grouped into eleven entities: red, pink, orange, brown, yellow, green, blue, purple, grey, white, and black. These are also the terms commonly used to communicate colors. Artists and designers have richer vocabularies and employ between 50 and 100 titles. Naming several hundreds of colors is a challenge for everyone, and this is why this task is performed by the tool “Color Name Finder”.
