color

If you are a designer or developer and are constantly trying to find the perfect hue, or adjust for small changes in the design of a Web site, banner, or brochure, you know how hard it can be to find a useful tool on the go. That's why an app like 3Colors Mixer can be so helpful. It's free and immediately allows you to adjust and test different saturation levels of all three primary colors to determine the right hex value for your current project.

3ColorsMixer is very easy to use. It has three sliders -- one for … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--You are the blob. And you are the paint, too, if you let the art collective here known as Anticlockwise Arts have its way with you.

Last night at the Academy of Sciences' weekly NightLife event, the group debuted a new project called "Watercolor Walls" that mixes basic tech tools and audience participation to give new life to your stodgy old silhouette.

As one of the nearby DJs spun remixes of pop hits from the likes of Justin Timberlake, the crowd of more than a thousand walked, strutted, and shimmied between Watercolor Walls' camera and projector and a 15-foot-tall screen on its way from one end of the museum to the other. Using infrared light, the camera and projector would outline the silhouettes of people moving in front of the screen -- but there was more to it. … Read more

Apple's ColorSync technology in OS X uses calibrated profiles of correction curves and other scaling factor information to match the color of various image input and output devices such as monitors, printers, and scanners, so images viewed on them will appear as close as possible.

Most devices will use a factory-provided profile or a generic one to give a close color match, but these often have notable color discrepancies that in some cases you can manage by creating your own profiles. For example, for matching colors across different displays, you can use the Calibrate button in the Color section … Read more

When it comes to free stuff for your tablet or e-reader, Amazon rules the roost.

The Amazon Appstore is home to a kajillion freebies for Kindle Fires, while the Kindle Store offers literally thousands of free Kindle e-books.

Barnes & Noble, on the other hand, offers a comparatively limited selection of free apps in its curated store, and I couldn't even find a "free books" section in the Nook Book Store.

At least there's Free Fridays, which gives you a free e-book every week. Today, for example, you can get the Nook edition of David Rhodes' "Driftless," … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Discussion: Are you spoiling a movie for yourself by listening to the soundtrack before watching the movie? Inspired by Clint Mansell's new "Stoker" score available to stream.

- Discussion: Which programs are still shown in standard definition?

- The New York Times warns against sitting at work.… Read more

The basic color picker that has been a part of Windows for ages is fine for most uses. It can create any color your PC's graphics can render. Millions of different shades and hues are possible. But graphics professionals, software designers, programmers, photographers, and artists need more than it offers, such as the ability to specify colors by code number in a variety of formats. Anny's Just Color Picker is just the sort of program these users need. It's a compact tool that loads and works quickly. You can select areas as small as a single pixel … Read more

LAS VEGAS--LG showcased a trio of monitors at CES 2013 including the 27-inch EA83 ColorPrime. The monitor is geared toward professional use with its 2,560x1,440-pixel IPS display, 90-degree rotating display and dedication to accurate color reproduction.

LG calls the monitor a "graphics powerhouse" with its ability to reproduce a wide variety of colors that accurately represents 100 percent of sRGB and 99 percent of the Adobe RGB. The EA83 ColorPrime offers a hardware calibrator and True Color Pro calibration software to adjust the monitor's color accuracy.

The other two LG monitors announced at CES 2013 … Read more

I've always heard that smell plays an important role in how food tastes. I didn't expect that color could also sway the taste buds. A study published in the Journal of Sensory Studies found that the color of a cup can influence the way people taste hot chocolate.

Betina Piqueras-Fiszman, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, and Charles Spence, a professor at the University of Oxford in England, subjected 57 participants to what may be one the tastiest science experiments ever.

The participants tasted samples of hot chocolate served in four different colors of plastic cups: white, cream, red, and orange. The sippers preferred the flavor of the beverage in orange or cream-colored cups. … Read more

Tablet prices just seem to keep dropping.

Acer is the latest company to lower the bar on pricing. The company is planning to sell a $99 Android tablet, the Iconia B1, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company plans to target consumers in emerging markets, though the report notes that Acer will get clearance from the Federal Communications Commission for use in the states.

The report, which cites unnamed sources, said the Iconia B1 will come with a 1.2 gigahertz processor and pack a 7-inch display with 1,024x600-pixel resolution -- which matches the specs from the older … Read more