A couple of weeks ago, I ran into a problem. I found this very nice looking color on a site while I surfed the net, and decided to use it on a graphic. After copying the hexadecimal from the source code, I didn’t know how get the RGB values for Photoshop from it. I thought, easy task, there should be a program for it, but to my very surprise I couldn’t find any. This small tutorial requires the Microsoft Calculator (If you don’t have it, install it over Control Panel/Software/Windows Setup/.).
First of all, I needed to switch the Calculator in “Scientific” mode, because otherwise there is no key for the hexadecimals. To switch, I just had to go to “View” and click on “Scientific”. After I did that, I had to make sure before I started to convert, that “Hex” was checked on the calculator.
The colors we use on the web, come in a certain format. It always looks something like: FF000A. In order to be able to convert it, I split it up in 3 parts: “FF”, “00” and “0A”. From RGB we know, that every color has certain Red, Green and Blue values. Hexadecimals are not different from that. It has Red, Green and Blue values (In order.). In order to convert the Red value, I put “FF” in the Calculator (Make sure that “Hex” is check first.) and clicked at “Dec”, which stands for decimal. If you did it, you should see a “255” appear in your calculator.
The next would be “00”, but this one is special, zero is always zero, it doesn’t matter how many zeros are there. That is why I dropped the zeros, and continue to “0A”. This time I just entered the “A” in the calculator and click at “Dec” again, and got a “10”. If the hex would have been “A0”, I would have entered “A0” in the calculator, but when the zero is first, you do not need to do it. It is like if you enter 01 it is still 1.
“FF000A” in decimals (and RGB values) is 255, 0 and 10. Isn’t that neat and easy way, and it is completely free too. Yeah!
Have fun converting, and just in case: “Yes it works backwards too.” (RGB to Hex).