Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Custom Skins => Topic started by: SkyChimp on May 09, 2005, 12:14:19 PM
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ok found a nice site for colors since some of us geting the wrong=me ;) http://www.skinnersheaven.com/
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there was a post by superfly IIRC that gave a link to a site with real color swatches...
search the forums for that,
i got the link at home and can post tonight
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You mean http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/colorcharts/colorcharts.asp ?
I cannot agree that that one is better. Or has 'real' color swatches.
First of all: It translates everything through FS595. This system is American and has 'only' little over 600 colors.
This means that for all non US colors you need luck to get the right color or only can approach it.
In many cases it's the only thing we got for old colors of small countries where all data is lost, but there are also some examples where better ways are available.
For example the RLM colors. A German system, what would be the best comparisation for an old German system? Right another German system. That would be RAL (1927) for which data is still available and RAL even released software to translate their colors to 'computer values' like RGB.
'The Paintshop Handbook' 1944 is still available and it contains a list where quite some RLM numbers are translated to RAL numbers. Combining this information with the values given by the the official RAL software will be much more relyable I think.
For Russian colors the maker of Skinners Heaven has used Munshell values published by Erik Pilawskii who did a lot of research on that subject. Beside the values calculated from the Munshell values comparing FS595 numbers are given.
Now we take
http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/colorcharts/stuff_eng_colorcharts_soviet.htm
We look for Tractor Bright green and get FS:14524
IPMS even calculates a nice color for you. But... When I look in FS595b documentations FS:14524 does not exist :confused:
I can explain that: FS595b has as first number 1 for gloss, 2 for silk and 3 for matte. So they mean a gloss version of color FS:314524 Which gives BBC69C a very faint color (should be a bit brighter for matte/gloss correction) which is much paler then 82E67B which is close to the actual Russian color. Quite a difference huh?
So, please stop talking that IPMS has 'REAL' color swatches, since they work with only one color system of some 600 colors. Beside that they cheat with that system giving colors that do not exist in that system. I know that trick is used more often to say'I mean this color but then glossy or matte' but it shows very clearly that that system does not match very well.
Skinners Heaven is quite open in how the results at the site are achieved and the methods used sound convincing to me. I have contacted the maker of the site and he is allways open for discussion and explain his view on the matter.
He also explained to me (and on a few forums) that RGB colors actually cannot be used as a standard. An LCD monitor has other gamma settings then a Trinitron monitor and a standard monitor again has other gamma settings. So, the colors will appear different on every type of monitor, and then we don't talk about calibration of a monitor. So, a colorlist for use on monitors (like we need in games) can never be correct, or only for a specific type of monitor.
Skinners Heaven offers a few simple tools to get the calibration better, but actually you would need expensive tools for that. That is also the reason why he suggests to use more sources to get the best looking result on your skin and because they might offer a nice mix of one color to create spotty and aged paint.
For being so open about how the results are achieved, the fact that sources are used that are as close as possible to the correct color and the wide range of colors given (much more for many more countries) has made Skinners Heaven one of the primary color sources for me. And actually I never look at IPMS anymore since there are lots of better sources around I think.
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I use this for Japanese colors
http://www.cty-net.ne.jp/~connellj/japan-w.htm
The ones I use for US colors has gone off line but I downloads the squares before it did on the main ones I use.