The invention provides a method for selecting the intensity level of each of the primary colors for displaying or printing a predetermined, desired color to be composed of a specified percent of each of the primary colors. Each primary color has available a predetermined number of discrete intensity levels ranging from minimum to maximum and is to be displayed on a matrix having a predetermined number of cells. The first step in the method is to determine a desired intensity level for each primary color and to select the number of cells of the matrix which are to display that color at that intensity level. These cells of each primary color are then arranged in the matrix in a predetermined ordering to display the desired color. The sequence of the ordering is predetermined and the same for each primary color. The starting point of the sequence for one of the primary colors is fixed, but the starting point for each successive primary color is dependent upon the ending cell location of the sequence of cells for the preceeding color. Using the invention, the amount of color memory required is reduced because the number of storage cells required for storage of color selection information need only be equal to the product of the numbers of available intensity levels for each primary color.