0

I am prepping PSDs for development of an iOS and android app.

For coloring text do I:

1) Use #000000 - black text - and vary opacity to achieve gray values for primary / secondary text shades?

2) Or use a 100% hex value of different shades of gray?

Google material design guide (http://www.google.com/design/spec/style/color.html#color-ui-color-application) suggests that I use opacity... is this what developers want? Does the same apply to iOS?

Thank you for your answers :)

Michelle Price
  • 3
  • 3
  • 2
    because design is subjective, this is not a good fit for this site – meda May 13 '15 at 16:42
  • 1
    @meda is correct. However, consider that reducing the opacity/alpha of your font colour will increase its transparency which may produce undesirable results on coloured or patterned backgrounds. – Shaggy May 13 '15 at 16:46
  • @meda Thank you for your comment. I am not asking for particular color values. I would like to know what developers prefer to receive from designers. 100% opacity colors with different hex values, or a single hex value with varying opacity. What translates best when implementing design into code. – Michelle Price May 13 '15 at 16:49
  • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15852122/hex-transparency-in-colors – Xjasz May 13 '15 at 16:50
  • @Shaggy Thanks for the input. I was thinking the same thing... I found it strange that google suggests: "For dark text on a light background, the most important text has an opacity of 87%. Secondary text, which is lower in the visual hierarchy, has an opacity of 54%. Text hints, like those in text fields and labels, have even lower visual prominence and an opacity of 26%." I guess I will stick to using 100% hex values and forget I ever read that :) – Michelle Price May 13 '15 at 16:51

1 Answers1

1

Use explicit values. That way your developer can either sample the colour using the eye dropper tool, or select the text and copy the hex value from the colour dialog. Colour will always be exactly what you intended.

Also, it's a good idea to turn off colour management in your photoshop file, so the colour your dev samples will be the actual RGB values without compensation for colour profiles. Edit -> Assign Profile -> Don't Color Manage This Document.

Jeff Clarke
  • 1,369
  • 6
  • 7