Effect of Desaturation on Colors

[Vraciu]

Greebo explained this to me as best he could, however please don't blame him for anything I type that is incorrect.

If you desaturate a color it seems to flatten it using gray (?).   Does this harm the accuracy of the color hue?   Let's suppose I am using the color chart for yellow Med Theater bands.   If I use desaturation to flatten them out then the yellow is no longer the same as the chart depicts, right?    Is this tradeoff acceptable or can I do something to pull the proper color back out and still have the same effect as the desaturation process is trying to create?

[Greebo]

Desaturation is a quick way of toning down any colour that looks too bright and loud on a skin. Best way to think of how it works is by analysing the RGB red green and blue levels of your colours. For example the brightest possible red you can have is red=255, green=0 and blue=0. By applying desaturation to this colour the red level is decreased and the other two colours increased. At 50% desaturation the levels are red=191, green=63, blue=63 and you have a very dull red. At 100% desaturation all three colours are at 127 and what you have is a mid-grey.

At any time you can reverse this change by applying an opposite saturation effect, i.e if you desaturated 20% then resaturate 20% to get back to where you were. You can also attach a saturation adjustment layer to a layer in PSP and then just adjust the effect by using the opacity slider as for any other layer.

Applying these sorts of effects is why you should separate colours into different layers on your skin, so one layer for yellow, one for red and so on. It just makes it so much easier to adjust things later. Cramming all your markings onto one layer is not a smart thing to do. My skins have up to 100 layers arranged into about 10 groups to keep everything manageable.

[Vraciu]

Desaturation is a quick way of toning down any colour that looks too bright and loud on a skin. Best way to think of how it works is by analysing the RGB red green and blue levels of your colours. For example the brightest possible red you can have is red=255, green=0 and blue=0. By applying desaturation to this colour the red level is decreased and the other two colours increased. At 50% desaturation the levels are red=191, green=63, blue=63 and you have a very dull red. At 100% desaturation all three colours are at 127 and what you have is a mid-grey.

At any time you can reverse this change by applying an opposite saturation effect, i.e if you desaturated 20% then resaturate 20% to get back to where you were. You can also attach a saturation adjustment layer to a layer in PSP and then just adjust the effect by using the opacity slider as for any other layer.

Applying these sorts of effects is why you should separate colours into different layers on your skin, so one layer for yellow, one for red and so on. It just makes it so much easier to adjust things later. Cramming all your markings onto one layer is not a smart thing to do. My skins have up to 100 layers arranged into about 10 groups to keep everything manageable.

I can't do 100 layers unfortunately as PSP5 only lets me see about 9 in the pulldown menu.  The others disappear through the top and getting to them takes a bit of mouse-based gymnastics.   

That skin you saw was my original and it was originally only one layer.  I think I now have it to six or seven.   I am now putting the yellow into its own layer called PAINT.

I like the effect that you showed me it's just that now when I compare the colors to the color chart it is obviously not an *exact* representation of the actual color (it definitely doesn't look as crazily stark though, which is what you were getting at).  Is this basically a tradeoff because we are dealing with video graphics instead of our eyes?

[Greebo]

I'd suggest updating your software, as that few layers is a big handicap.

There are various reasons why the "right" colours can look wrong on a skin:

First aircraft tended to be left outside in all weathers and paints were subject to colour shift as a result, some more than others. For example the red on Japanese markings faded to a reddish-orange over time. Some aircraft were kept a lot cleaner than others as well, a layer of dirt can make a big difference to the look of a skin.

When researching colours be wary, particularly of profiles and warbirds, even some colour matching websites can be suspect. USAAF planes used well documented Federal Standard paint numbers that you can track down on the web. In fact most Western air force colours are fairly well documented, but Soviet and Japanese colours are a minefield. While there are some WW2 colour photos, particularly of US planes, the colour balance of these photos are often wrong. This site is a fairly good starting point for aircraft colours but don't treat it as gospel:

http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/colorcharts/colorcharts.asp

A minor consideration is the scale distance effect. Imagine a landscape with green hills all the way to the horizon. The nearest hills look bright and the further ones get greyer and greyer, i.e. more desaturated. So the further away you are likely to be looking at the subject the more desaturated it should be to look right. Four engined bombers might need slightly more desaturation than small fighters since to frame a screenshot you'd need to zoom out more and your viewpoint is further away. In general though you'd only worry about this a lot if you are skinning something the size of a battleship.

Finally there is the issue of lighting effects in the game. AH3 introduced a whole load of different effects that made many of my AH2 skins look wrong to my eyes. For instance I found I needed to make the aluminium base colour I used a lot darker to prevent it looking washed out by all the lighting effects.

So in the end you may just have to adjust stuff until "that looks about right."

[Vraciu]

Well, I have used the charts provided by others as well as those on SPS.   I also have color photos of the Mustang in question.  To get the bright yellow tail to match the photos it does tend to look a bit too stark. 


D tail code, third from camera:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lh3rbv4sru1qz9tkeo1_500.png


The same group, different squadron: 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v503/swissmustangs/44-13298QP-QMarie.jpg


It has a bit of gloss to it but not as much as the AH2 skin after it was converted to AH3. 

So the question then becomes, can I use specularity to tone it down and preserve the color or just accept the compromise that comes with desaturating?

(I hope my questions are making sense.)

[Greebo]

Specularity just affects the strength of reflections on the skin. So a higher specularity might make areas of the yellow look whiter where the sun is reflecting, or bluer where the sky is reflecting. However the base colour is still the same. You should try to adjust specularity so your skin's reflections look similar to the reflections on the photo, colour is a different issue.

The yellow on the photo looks a touch more orange than the one on your skin to my eyes. The red on the photo is far less saturated than the one you used however.

[Vraciu]

Specularity just affects the strength of reflections on the skin. So a higher specularity might make areas of the yellow look whiter where the sun is reflecting, or bluer where the sky is reflecting. However the base colour is still the same. You should try to adjust specularity so your skin's reflections look similar to the reflections on the photo, colour is a different issue.

The yellow on the photo looks a touch more orange than the one on your skin to my eyes. The red on the photo is far less saturated than the one you used however.

What you did with the red looks dead on. 

I am wrestling with the yellow only because of what the color plates show us.   I dunno if the photos have any fading in them or not, but they do look more orange as you said. 

At the end of the day it may be a judgment call to get the yellow to mesh with the "cartoon" (as opposed to the perfectly photorealistic real world) environment of the graphics engine. 

There's no way to make this look "real" and nail the color, is there?

[Greebo]

My adjustment of your skin was very crudely done. I desaturated the whole paint layer to get the best compromise I could. My adjusted yellow may now be too desaturated, the best compromise to get the red looking something like it should. On one of my own skins I'd have been able to desaturate the red and then add a little red to the yellow because each colour would be on its own layer.

[Vraciu]

Got it. 

So do you add the red through hue adjustment?   Is that the best way?

I line select areas on layers and make adjustments that way since I cap myself at 11 layers in order to manage what I am doing.  Takes a little longer. 

The yellow still mergers better than mine.   I just wondered if I getting it to mesh always requires a color compromise.   If it does it's probably worth it I just want to be sure I am not missing something.

[Greebo]

I only had to compromise because I didn't want to get into editing individual colours. As everything was on one layer it was just a lot quicker for me to desaturate the whole layer. You are really making life difficult for yourself building your skins this way.

In the current version of PSP clicking on the colour on the image brings up a materials properties box which lets me adjust the RGB levels of that colour with sliders. I then use a flood fill, colour changing tool or airbrush tool to alter the colour on the image. I've no idea how you do this in PSP 5 though.

[Vraciu]

This was my original skin.  I didn't know about layers back then.  Every revision I have added a layer.  I've now split the yellow and red out so I can work with them individually. 

I think I may have sent you the single-layer bitmap not the multi-layer psp.  Can't recall.  Any way I am slowly adding layers.  My other Mustangs have a lot more layers now that I know how they work.  Definitely helps. 

Your changes still look better than the way I had it.    If you had to take a guess on the yellow what would you do?   Or shall I just eyeball it?

[Greebo]

My take on your yellow is that it needs to be a little more orange, but in the end its your skin and you need to make the choice.

[Vraciu]

My take on your yellow is that it needs to be a little more orange, but in the end its your skin and you need to make the choice.

I trust your judgment, Sensei.   

[Vraciu]

Any better?  PLEASE IGNORE THE RED: I have not adjusted it yet.   I know what to do because Greebo showed me so it will be fixed.


Skuzzy, I can't get your photo trick to work.  It won't display.  The URL doesn't point to anything.     

[Devil 505]

Looks good to me.