Washington ? A new $50 bill with touches of red, blue and yellow will be showing up soon at banks, in cash registers and wallets. A new $10 bill also is in the works, the third greenback to get colorized to cut back on counterfeiting.

Government officials used one of the new $50 bills Tuesday morning to buy a $45 U.S. flag, which came in a box, at a shop in Union Station. Old $50 bills will still be accepted and recirculated. The new bills still feature Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States.

As for plans for the new $10 bill, Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first treasury secretary, is expected to stay on the front, said Thomas Ferguson, director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

Various efforts have failed to put former President Ronald Reagan on the nation’s currency.

The new $10 bill is expected to be unveiled this spring and put into circulation in fall 2005. The 9last time the note got a new look was in 2000, when Hamilton’s portrait became oversized and moved slightly off center.

“As with the $50 and the $20, there will be subtle background tones and tints. They will be different from those used on the other two so each of the notes will start to be even more distinctive and easier for people to differentiate quickly,” Ferguson said. He wouldn’t say what the colors on the new $10 would be.

Colors for the redesigned notes vary by denomination.

After the $10 makeover comes the $100 bill, the most counterfeited note outside the United States, Ferguson said. The $5 bill won’t get a new look, and neither will the $1 and $2 notes, he said.

The newly redesigned 0 note is displayed in Union Station in Washington, D.C. A ceremony Tuesday marked the distribution of the new notes by the Federal Reserve System. Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, is still pictured on the bill.