Wednesday, March 15, 2006
By: Matthew Doucette

This list/table was created to demonstrate the vast difference between non-gamma corrected and gamma corrected colors, on a display that requires a gamma correction of 2.5. The gamma value of 2.5 was chosen as the most commonly used displays (CRTs, LCDs, etc.) all require a gamma correction of ~2.5. (Note: If your current display requires gamma correction other than 2.5, then the colors shown in this list/table are display incorrectly to you.)

Notice that some of the colors are actually completely different colors, not just slightly different luminosities of the same color, which is a commonly held misconception.

Also, some of the colors (the original, non-gamma corrected colors) in this list/table may already be gamma corrected. This is unlikely, but I must mention it as I am not 100% sure. It makes little sense to have a gamma-corrected color list, as it would mean the creator was assuming the type of display the color would eventually be used on. (NEW: I have verified by speaking to Paul Bourke that his color list is not gamma corrected.)

The colors in this list are a collaboration of various large color lists all over the Internet:

• Resene RGB Values List, Copyright Resene Paints Ltd 2001
• RGB colour space, Lists of RGB values for named colours, Written by Paul Bourke, May 1995
• X11 color names, The X Windows System's color list. The list I have may be an old version. Thanks to Greg Baker of Simon Fraser University for identifying this list for me!

I have modified some of the color names, from the above lists in the following manner:

1. I capitalized all the names,
2. I inserted spaces between words,
3. I replaced underscords with spaces,
4. I replace all "grey" with "gray",
5. I deleted duplicates, of course,
6. I appended numbering,
• I did this when there were too many similar colors of the same name for each to have its own unique name.
• At least one of the original color lists I create this list from already had color names that were numbered.
7. I appended descriptive terms.
• Whenever possible, I tried to do this rather than append a number.
• I used "Black", "Dark", "Medium", "Light", and "Bright" ("Black" being the darkest, and "Bright" being the lightest) to distinguish between different shades of the same color based on visual expectation and also on luminosity of the color, calculated via 30:59:11 R:G:B luminous ratio.
• I used "Blue", etc. to distinguish colors that have tinges of blue, for example.

WARNING: This Xona.com color list has modified names, slightly different from the standards found all over the Internet. If you do not wish to use a list with changed names, then DO NOT USE THIS LIST.

Decimal = (R,G,B) = (0..255,0..255,0..255)
Hexadecimal = #RRGGBB = #(00..FF)(00..FF)(00..FF)