What I did was find an chart that lists color values in Red, Green and Blue values. In this case, it happened to be a hexadecimal chart, which using the scientific calculator in Windows, I converted to decimal.
Here's what's so cool:
DMX values are 0-255
The hexadecimal values are 00 through FF, which are 0-255. Are you seeing where this is going?
Which means, hex values will translate to decimal values which WILL then translate to usable values with DMX fixtures that support RGB color mixing. And since you're using RGB values, and the lights use R,G&B LED's, this should now make logical sense. And when put into application, it does in fact work.
Where did I get this idea?
Well, "back in the day" when people actually knew how to do HTML by hand and not use some crap-tacular HTML spewing froth-package(as in all of them), values for colors on web pages were entered as "color=xxx,xxx,xxx" where each xxx represented Red, Green and Blue respectively and had to be entered as a decimal value. Later, as HTML got more rounded, hex values could be used instead(but in a slightly different format), and then still later, you could just name out certain colors.
So, you can go find a web color chart if you want. It's a good starting point. What you could do if you have PhotoShop or some other decent graphics package, is choose your own colors via the color selector. Most of these programs will give you those values as RGB numbers, which you can then use to program your lights. I'm no PhotoShop wizard by any stretch. I'm a sound guy, but I bought PhotoShop to deal with other things I do. Use whatever you have, I say!
When I found the web color charge, I looked up the "color names" for various color wheels in various fixtures I have: my spots, my movers, my wash lights. I wrote those down and then got the values off the web color name chart. The rest were relatively simple: Yellow, red, blue, gree, pink, purple, orange, stuff found on the chart no problem. Now, using those values and translated to my 64 LED Pros and Color Fusion and gel'ed Par38s, I could now "mix and match" fixtures with colors and get whatever I want. Cool? Sure is.
Now, making a cheat sheet is a good idea. I strongly recommend that. Always a good idea, especially if something goes wonky on you and you have to go into manual mode!
The best way I think is to find a web-based color chart and get used to converting hex values to decimal. In my case, my cheat sheet only shows the decimal values but they were obtained from hex values because at show time, you don't have time for conversions.
Now, go use it with MyDMX or a DMX Operator and go have fun!
