Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Color

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Scope

  • Should this also extend to cover the use of colours in heraldry? --Phil | Talk 11:39, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely. But I am not quite sure how we should go about it. — Xiong熊talk 08:41, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

Normalisation of color values

I am going to suggest that we attempt to standardise the normalisation of values used for RGB, CMYK, HSV and HSL attributes:

RGB
normalise all attributes to [0–255]
CMYK
normalise all attributes to [0–255]
HSV
normalise to ([0–360]°, [0-100]%, [0-100]%)
HSL
normalise to ([0–360]°, [0-100]%, [0-100]%)

--Phil | Talk 12:38, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

All wise, except for CMYK. RGB should be normalized to 255 because that's how it's primarily used -- to control a monitor; the classic unit being the byte. CMYK is for print, and ink densities are specified in %. — Xiong熊talk 08:41, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)
If you're happy to help with the re-normalisation, I'm willing to go along with using percentages for CMYK vectors. The spreadsheet I knocked up to do the calculations is configurable because this was a question I encountered when experimenting with it, so any future amendments I do can be in percentages. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 16:13, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
If the CMYK value is now being normalised to 0-100 I think we should add some % to specify the units (as with the HSV, like above):
  • CMYK (c, m, y, k) ({{{c}}}%, {{{m}}}%, {{{y}}}%, {{{k}}}%)
Also, why not use the same range for the RGB values? I know very little about this theme, but IMHO altough nowadays 8bits are used to represent a component of an RGB value probably in the future the number of bits used to represent every component will be increased. So a percentage is an exact solution that assures the "future", and anyway no information is lost because the 24bit RGB value is maintained in the hex triplet of the infobox. So I propose to change the RGB representation too:
  • RGB (r, g, b) ({{{r}}}%, {{{g}}}%, {{{b}}}%)
--surueña 09:04, 2005 May 20 (UTC)
The last 3 are poorly defined, vague, device-specific, ambiguous, generally useless, etc. We should have:
  • sRGB, as a hex triplet (#00ff00)
  • sRGB, as 8-bit decimal values (0, 255, 0)
  • linear RGB floats with sRGB primaries (0.0, 1.0, 0.0)
  • Adobe RGB (floats?)
  • Adobe wide-gamut RGB (floats?)
  • nearest Pantone numbers
  • nearest Munsel coordinates
  • CIE X,Y,Z
  • CIE L,a*,b*
  • CIE L,u,v
  • Y,Cb,Cr as used in the JPEG standard
AlbertCahalan 23:34, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Excel functions

I have created an Excel spreadsheet which I use for calculating the values to use. The following functions are written in VBA 6.3 for Excel 2002.

CMYK function

Function CMYK(intR As Integer, intG As Integer, intB As Integer, intScale As Integer) As String

    Dim dblR As Double
    Dim dblG As Double
    Dim dblB As Double
    
    Dim dblC As Double
    Dim dblM As Double
    Dim dblY As Double
    Dim dblK As Double
    
    Dim intC As Integer
    Dim intM As Integer
    Dim intY As Integer
    Dim intK As Integer
    
    If intR = 0 And intG = 0 And intB = 0 Then
    
        intC = 0
        intM = 0
        intY = 0
        intK = intScale
    
    Else
    
        dblR = intR / 255
        dblG = intG / 255
        dblB = intB / 255
        
        dblC = 1 - dblR
        dblM = 1 - dblG
        dblY = 1 - dblB
        dblK = WorksheetFunction.Min(dblC, dblM, dblY)
        
        intC = intScale * (dblC - dblK) / (1 - dblK)
        intM = intScale * (dblM - dblK) / (1 - dblK)
        intY = intScale * (dblY - dblK) / (1 - dblK)
        intK = intScale * dblK
    
    End If
    
    CMYK = Right$("00" & Dec2hex(intC), 2) & Right$("00" & Dec2hex(intM), 2) & Right$("00" & Dec2hex(intY), 2) & Right$("00" & Dec2hex(intK), 2)

End Function

HSV function

Function HSV(intR As Integer, intG As Integer, intB As Integer) As String

    Dim dblR As Double
    Dim dblG As Double
    Dim dblB As Double
    
    Dim dblMax As Double
    Dim dblMin As Double
    
    Dim dblH As Double
    Dim dblS As Double
    Dim dblV As Double
    
    Dim intH As Integer
    Dim intS As Integer
    Dim intV As Integer
    
    dblR = intR / 255
    dblG = intG / 255
    dblB = intB / 255
    
    dblMax = WorksheetFunction.Max(dblR, dblG, dblB)
    dblMin = WorksheetFunction.Min(dblR, dblG, dblB)
    
    If dblMax = dblMin Then
        dblH = 0
    Else
        Select Case dblMax
            Case dblR: dblH = 0 + (dblG - dblB) / (dblMax - dblMin)
            Case dblG: dblH = 2 + (dblB - dblR) / (dblMax - dblMin)
            Case dblB: dblH = 4 + (dblR - dblG) / (dblMax - dblMin)
        End Select
    End If
    
    If dblMax = 0 Then
        dblS = 0
    Else
        dblS = (dblMax - dblMin) / dblMax
    End If
    
    dblV = dblMax
    
    intH = (360 + dblH * 60) Mod 360
    intS = dblS * 100
    intV = dblV * 100
    
    HSV = Right$("000" & CStr(intH), 3) _
            & Right$("000" & CStr(intS), 3) _
            & Right$("000" & CStr(intV), 3)

End Function

color-stub

category:color stubs is nicely populated now. I would suggest strongly to always point out differences between your direct codes and web color codes. Circeus 00:03, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

I want to expand the above comment. color-stub is well-populated (though still incomplete); while there are a mere 17 standard web colors. In some cases, there is even conflict -- the standard web color lime is actually full RGB green, that is HTML #00FF00. The color code green points to a color I usually see described as "forest", which has no article (!), HTML #008000.
I think you might have misunderstood the function of category:color stubs: this is to collect—hopefully non-permanently—those color-related articles which need expansion.
I perfectly understood the color stub. You confused 2 totally unrelated sentences, since I wasn't quite clear in my meaning. I meant that what was done at lime (color) should be extended to all other named colors (web colors#Proprietary color names). see for example indigo, azure (color) and gold (color) versus their named equivalent. This should not be difficult to include into {{infobox color}} ("named color value" or whatever) Circeus 17:01, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

web-color template

This is a royal mess, though not of our making. The template {{web colors}} currently links to colors by name, although it now displays correct swatches. I don't know if this should be fixed, or even how. I shudder to think of a template with two links for each color. — Xiong熊talk 08:41, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)
The template links to the colors according to the HTML/CSS keyword which is actually used to create the corresponding swatch. It is entirely appropriate for the articles on [[lime (color)#Web color|]] and [[green#Web color|]] to contain a section each on the corresponding web color, explaining how this differs from other definitions of the color. I would even suggest that the template might link to those sections, except that this can prove unstable if someone decides to rename the section. --Phil | Talk 16:32, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

When "Category" just doesn't do it

Here is a fine example of the engine failing the user. Category:Colors and the redundant Category:Color stubs, first, should be merged. Meanwhile, the really necessary item here is a color wheel, a clickable image map or something, so one can navigate to a given color by color. — Xiong熊talk 08:41, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)


Other color spaces

Some other color spaces of note are:

  • Pantone -- but is there any way to link to their colors? not free


Edit text above, don't be shy. — Xiong熊talk 08:41, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

Project scope

Is this to be merely a narrow project, tidying and standarizing the individual color articles themselves; or a broader effort to integrate all the color-related pages? — Xiong熊talk 08:41, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

I had assumed that my question about heraldry was a sufficient clue: the latter as far as I'm concerned. --Phil | Talk 16:36, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Outgamuts

How do we swatch articles on colors outside the normal RGB monitor gamut? — Xiong熊talk 08:41, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

No idea. I'm not even thinking about ultraviolet or infrared. --Phil | Talk 16:38, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
This is easy, except for hex triplets. So put "n/a" for the hex triplet. For sRGB, simply go outside of the normal 0..255 range. The same for anything else. It's OK to use negative numbers. AlbertCahalan 23:42, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Infobox Coordinate Explanation

A draft article for explaining the {{infobox color}} template coordinates is located here. It is also proposed that this would be linked from within the template-generated box, in one of two formats...



A color
 
Color Coordinates
Hex triplet #AAAAAA
RGB (r, g, b) N (R, G, B)
CMYK (c, m, y, k) N (C, M, Y, K)
HSV (h, s, v) (H°, S%, V%)
  N: Normalised to [ 0–255 ]




The first format, proposed by Phil and shown here, places the link from the "Color Coordinates" header in the silver bar above the actual coordinates.

The concern with this format is that it is not clear if this would be normal Wikipedia usage. A question about this format has been posed at the Village Pump here.



A color
 
Color Coordinates
Hex triplet #AAAAAA
RGB (r, g, b) (R, G, B)
CMYK (c, m, y, k) (C, M, Y, K)
HSV (h, s, v) (H°, S%, V%)
  About These Coordinates




So I have proposed this alternate format, which replaces the "normalization note" and the footnote marks with an "About These Coordinates" link at the bottom of the box instead of the top.



I would like to hear whether anyone has a preference for either of these and why. Also, please review the draft and respond if you think it is useful and/or solves some of the issues with coordinate selection mentioned above.

Thanks. CoyneT talk 02:05, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I fear you have misunderstood the problem. It is not the placement of the link which is likely to be controversial, it is the target and the fact that it is outside the normal article namespace. --Phil | Talk 08:12, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
Oh. Sorry, I thought it was entirely a matter of format.
I looked around and I see a link to an external page from the (heavily used) template at Infobox#Movies; the IMDB page link at the bottom is an external link. (The template itself is at Template:Infobox movie.)
I see a similar usage in the copyable table format (not a template) demonstrated at Infobox#Dog Breeds, which has a special section for external links at the bottom. (Note on this: I clicked on a few breeds and had no trouble finding examples where the external links were present in the copied table in the current article; see: Airedale Terrier, Jack Russell Terrier, Chihuahua (dog), English Shepherd, and English Cocker Spaniel.)
I also see a proposed (apparently discussion-only so far) infobox with something similar to what we are proposing at Infobox#Compounds, the Disclaimer link at the bottom is a link to Wikipedia:Chemical infobox.
Surely what we are proposing is at least as acceptable as a list of external links? Maybe we just need to get it into the regular Wikipedia space (such as at Wikipedia:Colors) rather than in the WikiProject?
Our discussion at Village Pump seems to have produced no objections to the idea of an explanation page specifically -- just that we are using coordinates which don't work with so-and-so's pet program. I see no way to avoid that without making the color infobox multiple pages long. This, of course, was the whole point of the explanation: to explain our choices so as to avoid a need for such a "giant box". CoyneT talk 23:35, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The new infobox is excellent and I support its immediate adoption. The link to the normalization page can be fixed later.
As far as that link is concerned, I suggest it point to a page in article mainspace on color normalization generally. That page should include project-specific notes, where appropriate, using Template:Project usage. This kind of problem does come up from time to time (see Billion and Short scale) and we should try to handle it consistently each time. — Xiong熊talk* 12:23, 2005 May 27 (UTC)

Pronunciation

The pronunciation of the names of these colours, if given at all, should be given in IPA (and maybe X-SAMPA too). This is not the case for heliotrope, ochre and cerise instead some nonsense transcription was given. These need either deleting or fixing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%28pronunciation%29

- Jimp 24May05

Do Colors Deserve Pages?

I've noticed that a lot color terms (e.g. Category:Colors) have been recieving their own Wiki pages. It strikes me that most of these are never going to be more than definitions and as such probably belong in the Wiktionary rather than Wikipedia. See: Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Comments? Dragons flight 18:51, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Some colors are rich in references; one could almost write a book on Black (color) alone. Of course, little can be said about some colors except that they exist and have such-and-such a name.
I have suggested that we sharply reduce the number of individual color pages by merging them into commonly-understood families -- Red (color), Blue (color), and so forth. It is arrogant to define a page called Red and head it up with an infobox containing a swatch of a particular shade of red, as if that were the single definition of the word.
Lime (color) and Green (color), for instance, are really both shades of green; depending on one's color system, one might consider either to "really be" green. An RGB monitor with the "green" gun on full and the others shut off looks very like Chartreuse (color), but crayons, poster board, dry erase markers, and printer's inks called "green" are much darker shades. Rather than split hairs endlessly, it's better to point all references to one page.
Longer pages, containing discussons and swatches of several related shades, would of course require work be done, with actual thought behind it. To me, this is a marker of good encylopedic content. Endless stubby pages incapable of growth, each one with a single obscure shade depicted, carry with them the odor of fancruft, without the fun.
I think the specific infobox swatches are fine and we should have them, but color is not quantized -- it forms a continuous spectrum, and depending on how one chooses to view it, on more than one axis.
Image:Colortest1.PNG appears, at first blush, to contain four boxes, each of which is composed of perhaps 3 or 4 colors. Actually, each pixel is a different shade -- over 16,000 per box. Should we have a different page for each one? I think not.


Here's a very rough idea of the sort of "disambiguation" swatch I might create:
Every point in this image is some shade of green, although the very corners stretch the concept. I think this does more to illustrate Green (color) as a concept than a single clearly-defined shade. Lime, Chartreuse, Light Green, Dark Green, Forest, and perhaps Olive Drab ought all be on one page. I don't suggest we throw out the single-shade infoboxes, nor will I get on my high horse and shout that this-or-that shade of green is "POV". But I do think it's clear that this sample is more inclusive of the many colors that people think of and connect to the word "Green". — Xiong熊talk* 13:29, 2005 May 27 (UTC)
How about creating articles like Shades of Red, Shades of Blue, etc: then you can refer to each without conflating them together. --Phil | Talk 16:19, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
I oppose having three pages for Green, Lime, and Chartreuse. I don't want them at all, except as redirects. "Chartreuse" is not an encyclopedic topic. I don't want to create yet another stubby little page, or a plethora of dabs. I want every swatch that contains some shade of green to be moved into Green (color) and the whole page brought up to some sort of encyclopedic standard.
As I move around the project, I see literally dozens of these outbreaks of cruft, obsessive repetitive articles. I just came from a quick look at knots; there is the one expected article at Knots, with a few examples and definitions -- and then there are about a hundred invididual pages, each "devoted" to one knot, often without so much as a description, let alone a photo. Somehow in our enthusiasm to reach 500K or 1M articles, we decided that it was quite okay to have thousands of cheap, template-based stubs, each one repeating the same facts in the same order. Graveler, Ranks and insignia of Starfleet, Pom Pom (Homestar Runner) -- useless cruft, useless even to the otaku who create them, since they have far more detailed materials available for them to drool over.
Have you ever looked at a table of logarithms -- a real printed book? Row after row of numbers, and each one looks like the last. No comment is made about any particular number; they are just printed for your reference. Such a book is useful, if you have no slide rule handy, but it is not an encyclopedia of general interest.
We are not in business here to duplicate or compete with Pantone. We are not going to provide reference swatches for every hue and shade. We do not need to attempt to mandate a specific swatch as the definition of Red, distinct from every other shade. Whatever value we can contain in this direction will not be most usable by fragmenting it among a hundred pages, unrelated except in that they all point here.
We would do well to uncover primary sources that discuss Red, and build a comprehensive article around them. We would do well to display, say, about five or six distinct and notable shades of red on that page. I might be persuaded to Photoshop up a formal version of Image:Colortest2.PNG for shades of red and a similar version for the eight or so other common colors. And that's about all we need, so far as individual pages for colors are concerned. Color is a complex topic; entire books have been written about only one aspect of it. We can certainly write a dozen or more pages full of real content -- color in film, color in computers, color in Old Masters, color theory, color complements, color illusions, and so forth.
Of course, that will require actual work, and I've said I'm willing to help. Right now, as Dragons flight says, some of these color pages will never become anything more than what they are now, and I don't want to get heavily involved with something that will eventually be pushed right off the project. — Xiong熊talk* 14:49, 2005 May 28 (UTC)
I agree absolutely. Having one page for each colour is absurd. It would be better to group them all together (with perhaps some worthy exceptions, e.g. magenta, cyan, violet, indigo). This, of course, brings up the interesting question of "How many commonly-understood families are there?"
I've been trying to figure this out for just about as long as I can remember. It's problematic, to say the least. Is pink a shade of red? Is magenta a shade of purple? How light can you make light brown before it really isn't brown any more?
As far as I can make out there are at least ten commonly-understood colours or colour families. They are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, grey and white. What have I left out? How about pink? Of course there are the metalic colours (gold, silver, etc.) these could be grouped onto the same page too.
Jimp 1Jun05
Color in language is not always logical. Why is there a word ("Pink") for light red but no common word for light blue? Of course, this has to do with the fact that all human bodies are pink in places; pink is a sexually attractive color -- this is hard-wired into the human brain.
Brown is really a dark shade of orange, but it is the color of shit and dirt and other organic substances of importance to every living thing. Thus, we instinctively perceive it as a distinct color; all shades of brown seem related to one another, but not to orange, which is such a rare color in nature that (as I understand it) there is not even a word for it in Spanish.
"Metallic colors" are technically not colors at all, but textures. There is a certain quality in the appearance of gold metal, distinct from the color of light it reflects. Similarly, white paper and white cloth have distinct appearances, even though they may be the same identical color.
I am not hostile to a number of color pages, even as many as 20 of them; I wouldn't fight a battle over any given page, so long as the overall number are merged into a set that is useful to the reader. From a color theory aspect, a pink swatch may appear on Red (color), while Pink (color) have its own page, too. But there are literally an infinite number of distinct shades of color, and designers, paint makers, catalog writers, and interior decorators have coined thousands of color names. As time and energy permit, Saffron (color) and Periwinkle (color) may be created as redirects to Yellow (color) and Purple (color); but they do not need distinct articles of their own and indeed, such are unhelpful.
In any case, the relationships among colors are dense and complex, and unsuitable is a classification system designed to manage, say, different models of automobile. If I can get any sort of support for it, I will try to produce a set of navigation spectra similar to the image above; these should really be implemented as image maps. A workaround is possible, as is appeal to the developers, but again, I'd like to see some support before building solutions. — Xiong熊talk* 01:34, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)
I think it's better to plot regions on CIE cromaticity graphs, at two or three different brightness levels. You can get exact coordinates for six colors from the U.S. government, as used on highway signs. (where the problem is carefully studied, so that different suppliers can easily ensure that all drivers will properly distinguish the colors) AlbertCahalan 00:01, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Split into subcategories

Category: Colors is getting large and will get larger as more colors are added, so I thought it would be a nice idea to split the category into subcategories to make some navigation easier.

Here is what I propose:

So, what do you think? Andros 1337 10:23, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think Red (color) should include genreral discussion of all shades of red. Pink is a special case, because it is psychologically distinct -- but all shades of blue, light or dark, should be discussed and sampled on Blue (color).
You have the correct general length of the list quite correct: 11 (or so) general color pages, each of which should display a few swatches representative of that color. But there is no compelling reason to multiply pages. Nothing can ever be said about Teal or Aquamarine sufficient to warrant its own page. A large number of redirects might be entertained, such as Aquamarine (color) → Blue (color). But there is no advantage to dozens, even hundreds, of individual color pages. — Xiong熊talk* 21:03, 2005 August 7 (UTC)

Religion

I've noticed that several of the colour articles have a line describing the meaning of the colour in 'religion' but the religion in question invariably seems to be Christianity. This could do with some rewording, but since I don't have time at the moment I thought I'd mention it here in case some enthusiastic soul felt like taking on this rewarding task. — Moilleadóir 23:00, 13 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Islam is strongly identified with green -- a particular shade of green if I'm not mistaken. Sikhs wear light blue turbans as a banner for Sikh independence. Buddhists wear saffron; Easterners of all kinds wear white in mourning (which is probably already mentioned). That's all that floats to the top of my addled egg. — Xiong熊talk* 21:07, 2005 August 7 (UTC)

Discussion of CMYK

Why the CMYK function given above? This is simple, but gives totally unrealisic colors (see CMYK). I agree with the assertion that CMYK does not belong in the message box because it is not well defined. For that matter, nor is "RGB". See absolute color space. I hope this isn't taken as a personal attack, but I do think the color boxes might have been conceived and perpetuated by people who didn't actually understand color science.

I have seen the proposal that CMYK be dropped from other people than me, but nothing seems to happen (in terms of reply or discussion). How can we actually get this debated. What use is this information supposed to have? Notinasnaid 10:33, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Walk into any bar frequented by pressmen and graphic designers and shout "CMYK conversion!" Then get a beer and go stand in a safe corner, watch the fireworks. On second thought, order the beer first and stand near the door, ready for hasty departure. — Xiong熊talk* 23:12, 2005 August 7 (UTC)

As one of the above maligned groups I would argue that the CMYK values are useless in their current form. For example of you print 100,100,0,0 as defined in Blue prints out a very dark navy. This is not to say that CMYK is useless, just that the current conversion equation is way out. This is because 0,255,255 is cyan, NOT process cyan. Process cyan is quite a different colour, and is the colour of the real printing ink. While print colours will always vary, they don't vary nearly as drastically as the colour conversions in wiki. My proposed solution is to change the colour conversion macros for cmyk, and fix the pages affected. The macro should be based on assumed profiles of sRGB (as endorsed by amongst others W3C) and SWOP (SWOP being more arbitrary, but still the most common), then rounded to the nearest 5%. CMYK needs to (I vote) be fixed, or deleted, if we're to cover process cyan et al. --Bb3cxv 10:46, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What is Color?

This debate never ends. Color is about 25 times more complex a subject than reasonably intelligent laymen ever guess it could be. Let me see if I can hint at it in a short space:

There are five general ways to influence the perception of color: Emission, addition, transmission, refraction, and reflection. Texture is important too, but beyond our scope here.

Emission

A substance is excited in some way; that is, it is stimulated so as to release photons. Photons may be of almost any given energy level; the higher the energy of photon, the shorter the corresponding wavelength. (See: Quantum Mechanics) If these photons fall into an extremely narrow range of energies, and strike the eye's retina, light is perceived.

White light is a psychological perception of the absence of color, conditioned by exposure to natural daylight. (Daylight itself is a complex thing, about which more will be said later.) In general, a "basket" or rich mixture of photons of various energies will be seen as white. There is no such actual color, in the physical sense.

Blackness is the absence of all light, rarely enjoyed in pure form.

Examples: Direct sunlight is more or less white; burning organic matter such as wood or cotton generates light with a yellowish cast; but these are blends. Much more specific colors can be seen when certain elements are heated to incandescence. Sodium is famous for its yellow color, so bright that slight contamination of other samples often masks their true colors. Hydrogen is known for its blue color. In both cases, however, photons of more than one energy are generated. Lasers are the only known sources of pure monochromatic light.

Emission is the genesis of all color experience, for it is how all light is produced. The color of emitted light is dependent upon the emitted photon's energy, which in turn depends on the amount of energy lost as electrons fall to lower energy states. Thus color has been key to understanding of atomic structure and is the gateway to quantum mechanics. (Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize not for General Relativity, but for his explanation of the Photoelectric Effect)

Addition

Many sources of light produce photons of more than one energy; thus the color perceived is the sum of all. Of course, there is nothing to stop one from setting up two light sources, each a generator of a single color, and shining them into the same eye at the same time. This will result in the perception of a third color; however, this is an illusion.

The standard additions are:

  • Red + Green = Yellow
  • Red + Blue = Magenta
  • Green + Blue = Cyan
  • Red + Green + Blue = White
No violet photons were used in the making of this image.

Remember, however, these are purely illusions. Red and green lights do not interact in any physical way; they do not combine to form yellow light. It is merely the nature of the eye that we misperceive a blend of red and green as yellow. In the figure, squares are filled with a red/blue checkerboard. Except for the white border, no pixels are any other color; the perception of magenta or purple is a mere illusion.

Already, we see that our perception differs from reality. Color is not an exact science. Anyone purporting to make definitive statements about color runs the risk of confusing color as seen by the human eye and color as it is exists in the natural world. It is known that many animals do not see color at all, or see it differently from Man; indeed, not all humans see color in the same way.

Transmission

Light of pure color -- prior to the creation of the CRT -- was very rarely viewed directly. The next step in removal from manipulation of the light source itself is to interpose a substance between source and eye.

File:Transmission-optics.png

While any substance will emit light if sufficiently heated, many substances do not pass light well; most do so without altering it in color. For a material to alter the color of passing light, the molecular bonds must be strained. The distorted electron field selectively absorbs light of certain wavelengths, but passes others.

Obviously, color by transmission is only apparent when the emitting source is an addition of several colors. If the source emits, say, only blue light; and the filter absorbs blue light; then no light will pass. If the source emits only red light; and the filter absorbs only blue; then it will have no effect. But if the source emits white light (a mixture of many colors); then the filter will pass light with the blue photons absorbed -- which will appear, generally, yellow. Such a filter will generally be called "yellow", although it acts only on blue light.


Refraction

File:PinkFloydDarkSideoftheMoonalbumcover.jpg

The seminal Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon's cover features a rather idealized illustration of a classic experiment. White light passes through a glass prism and is refracted into a rainbow -- a band of colored light.

This is because light of different colors (energies) is refracted at different angles. The colors thus seen are real, not imaginary.

File:Refraction-optics.png

Perhaps a simple demonstration will illuminate. Cast a yellow beam through a prism; the beam will be bent as it passes through, but will remain a tight beam. If red and green beams are added together, they will appear yellow to the eye; but the prism will separate them.

This underlines the subjective nature of color. Well-chosen red and green lights may be skillfully blended so as to exactly simulate yellow to a given eye -- but yellow light has not been so created!

Indeed, materials absorb light of one wavelength (color) and emit another -- another true color -- but these are effects are rarely seen. Usually, the material must be illuminated with high-energy (ultraviolet) light in order to fluoresce in the visible range; most commonly, visible light is absorbed and the energy emitted as heat -- infrared light.

In most cases, when it appears that colors have been created through some combination of light sources and pigments, it is merely that the eye has been fooled.


Reflection

Last in our discussion, but most common of all, is the illusion of color produced by reflection. As in transmission, some materials absorb photons disproportionately in a certain range of energy levels (= wavelengths of light = colors); again, it is due to strained molecular bonds and distorted electron shells.

A certain material may absorb blue light and reflect all others; such matter will appear black in blue light, red in red light, and yellow in white light. From a physics standpoint, it is itself always "black" -- it emits no light of its own.

Paint is a material that is designed specifically to absorb certain colors and diffuse the rest; so is ink and so is dye. These pigmented materials are labeled and sold according to the illusion of color so produced; so the pigment used as an example above is called "yellow".

Pigments may be mixed together and examined under white light. This is called subtractive mixing and is complementary to the additive mixing mentioned earlier. The standard mixtures are:

  • Cyan + Magenta = Blue
  • Cyan + Yellow = Green
  • Magenta + Yellow = Red

Wise readers will anticipate CMYK with the demand: "Well, what is the K for then? Why use black ink?" They will also grumble: "When you mix Cyan + Magenta + Yellow, you don't get Black; you get a sort of muddy brown." These questions answer one another.

Remember that ordinary sunlight has a broad and continuous spectrum. Nearly every imaginable visible wavelength of light falls on the Earth; indeed, that is why it is the visible spectrum; evolution has found it most useful. Other common sources of general illumination are made to resemble sunlight to a certain degree, for human comfort. Thus a piece of "white" paper reflects a broad range of colors, which together appear white.

To simulate the broadest possible gamut, or range of possible colors, the standard C, M, and Y four color process inks are chosen to be rather light and absorb only a rather narrow range of colors. Mixed all together, they are still rather light in tone, a mere muddy brown. For the appearance of dark color, K (black) is added -- a pigment designed to absorb as much light as possible, equally of every wavelength.

This is an extremely clever system, since by its means, a wide gamut may be simulated using only four inks. However, it is still quite limited. One reason for the tremendous mass appeal of CRTs -- televisions and computer monitors -- is that they offer a much wider gamut than ordinary process printing. To the uninitiated, they appear unusually vibrant and life-like, compared to printed photographs.

Those who must produce high-quality printed matter frequently resort to colors other than the standard process inks. These are able to simulate colors outside the process gamut, and simulate with greater fidelity those within; they are tailor-made to the occasion. However, printing with spot inks grows rapidly expensive; 8 colors means 8 printing plates, and 8 trips through the press. Most commercial presses are able to print no more than perhaps 6 colors, one after another; it is not considered cost-effective to reload the printed pages and take them through the press a second time for 6 more colors. While it is common for manufacturers to insist on one or perhaps two spot colors, chosen to match the company logotype, it is very rare to see a mass-market item printed with any more.

Illumination

We close the circle by returning to the source of "white" light under which some pigmented matter is examined. We know by now that there is no such thing as truely white light; all light thus named is merely a blend of other lights. It is possible to define a standard blend as "white" and indeed this is done -- again and again, each such standard differing from the next.

I should dearly love to illustrate "white point", but this is completely impossible within our context. I have no idea what "white" means to your browser, on your monitor, or how any given swatch will actually appear to you. The article on Color temperature explains the matter in some detail, but be cautioned that the black-body spectrum is a mere illustration -- essentially a cartoon.

The "kind" of white light used to illuminate a pigment alters the perception of color. Thus, "warmer" light (more reddish, actually cooler in a physics sense) makes pigments appear redder; bluer "white" light makes pigments appear bluer.

There is great concern in the graphics arts community that white point be correctly determined for a given application. Thus, two entirely different pigments may be chosen to display a company's logo on a billboard and in a magazine intended to be read at home. The billboard, viewed by daylight, and the magazine ad, viewed by incandescent light, may both appear to the eye to present the same color -- but if you were to lay one on top of the other in any one light, you would see they were quite different. (!)

Halftones

File:Halftone-demo.png
File:Color-halftone-demo.png

No discussion of printing would be complete without mention of halftones. This is seen clearly in commmon, "black and white" newspaper photos. Obviously, the ink is itself black; the paper white. How to illustrate grays? The printing plate is so made as to lay down the black ink in a pattern of tiny dots. Bigger dots mean a darker gray.

Again, this is a pure illusion. The ink is always black, no matter how distributed on the page. The imperfection of the human eye -- the inability to perceive tiny objects -- is turned into a virtue. Provided one does not put one's nose directly on the paper, one's eye is fooled into imagining shades of gray.

File:Color-no-halftone-demo.png

Halftoning is extended to the printing of color, and for the same reasons. A solid block of magenta might appear very bright, but actually it is quite a ways towards black -- it has absorbed much light. A color photo printed without halftoning would appear very dark.

To further extend the gamut, halftoning allows the press to put down only a fraction of the ink of a solid blob. The process is complicated by the fact that now 4 inks are being put on the paper at one time. It has been found that the best appearance is achieved when the dot patterns are set at precise angles to one another, so that the overlap of dots of different colors is tightly controlled.

You see, by now, that color in mass market publications is a double illusion: carefully-blended process inks and tiny halftone dots combine to fool the viewer into believing he sees far more than he does.

Screens

Taking as a whole the class of color display screens -- televisions, desktop computer monitors, laptop and cell phone screens -- there is simply no way to say what users are actually seeing.

Each device has a standard, which may be followed more or less faithfully during manufacturing, and which differs from the next model; each item in use ages and is calibrated (or otherwise meddled with) by the user. Each device will display color a different way. Also, the ambient light will affect color perception.

Taking the last two points together, it is a simple absurdity to equate the display of some color on all screens with any display on all printed matter. Considerable money and effort is spent to match colors among specific screens and printing technologies, under controlled and assumed illumination. These are known by the technical users themselves to be poor approximations, of limited validity even under carefully-controlled conditions -- and of almost no value whatever when that control is lost.

Language and Human Nature

Up to now, we've been pretty technical, and we've already called into question the meaning of the word "yellow". But when we extend ourselves, and walk away from the optics lab and the printshop, we see color is even more ambiguous.

Spanish -- if I understand correctly -- has no word for Orange (color). There are only reds and yellows. Some languages use the same word to mean both blue and green; even gray may be included.

The Spanish language has the word "naranja" which means "orange" (the colour and the fruit). --surueña 17:05:57, 2005-08-08 (UTC)
Well, I don't know everything -- I'm especially weak on foreign languages, like most Americans. I once had a Mexican girlfriend who made such a statement, but she'd been in El Norte a long time. — Xiong熊talk* 04:14, 2005 August 9 (UTC)

In the American language, there are a great number of words for colors. Some of them have existed since antiquity; others are more recent. A vast number of color names are modern coinages (or repurposings); such are driven by the marketing demands of paint manufacturers and the egos of interior designers. These tend to be entirely relative to the palette of the given manufacturer. For instance, Ebony is a wood, and like all natural materials appears in a range of colors and textures; but it has come to be used as a name for one shade or another of black -- a pure marketing contrivance, for nobody can say, with authority, how Ebony (color) differs from solid black. Many such names are attempts to put a decent face on industrial sterility, such as a "bone" that is merely a dingy white. Crayola, infamously, introduced Flesh in 1949 as a synonym for "skin tone of the ideal 'white' person"; in 1962 they renamed this Peach, which it resembles even less.

Almost all color names are somewhat contrived. Primitive man's visual system developed to identify the items in his environment that were critical to his survival. These were:

  • Sky (that way is up)
  • Dirt (that way is down)
  • Shit (somebody has been here, possible food)
  • Water (for drinking, but don't drown)
  • Forest (safety and some food)
  • Plains (danger and more food)
  • Blood (more danger but possible food)
  • Human genitals (sex)

These give rise to the only important colors:

  • Light Blue
  • Brown
  • Blue-green
  • Green
  • Amber
  • Red
  • Pink

Additionally, of course, many things lack color, being white, black, or gray. Other colors are not found in nature, or found rarely, in small amounts. I suggest primitive man is far more concerned with a plethora of shades of brown, marking different beasts, than in the entire range of purples.

Colors in general are emotional subjects. One might say we are hard-wired to emotional reaction at the sight of certain colors; other colors and blends evoke complex responses because of the combination of stimuli. The Lüscher color test analyzes personalities based solely on indicated preferences among swatches of standardized colors. Different people and different cultures assign different values to various colors, but for all, color is a hot topic.

In this light, it seems obscene to kill color, to dissect it out into unrelated bits, to presume to encompass all color by technical definition.

Summary

I only wish I had spent perhaps less time on technical exposition than on humanistic; for that is where my heart lies. "Man is the measure of all things..." and for a subject as integral to the human experience as color this is doubly true. I hope my readers will note that the thrust of the technical exposition is to show that color theory is not even a sandcastle built on the beach; it is a mirage, a shimmering curtain in the sky, a house of mirrors, a wizard's trick, a lover's sigh.

I stand here opposed to the entire direction taken by WikiProject Color. I blame nobody; I admit I, too, began my involvement here by questioning CMYK normalization -- a petty technical point and one subject to endless debate. For a technical person, it seems safe and sane to state, "Red is 100% R, 0% G, and 0% B in the RGB color space." Like so many technical definitions, it is absolute and inarguable, except in the most petty ways. And I admit that I, too, am a technician.

I resolve to overhaul the group of named color pages, as best as I'm able in the weeks to come. I don't promise haste or perfection, and I certainly don't mean to exclude other contributors. But it is time to toss false technical perfection in the trash and replace it with discussions of colors appropriate to readers who are merely human.

— Xiong熊talk* 03:59, 2005 August 8 (UTC)

Red (color)

This is what I mean. — Xiong熊talk* 23:20, 2005 August 15 (UTC)

I haven,t really read through the entirety of the above summary, but I think this structure would do great as a basis for the color article. The montage idea sounds fascinating too. Circeus 23:51, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Every object in that image might be called red by a fair fraction of people. It's not just the image I'm trying to promote; it is the holistic approach to color. I don't think it helps much to crank up the red gun on a reader's monitor, cut off the other two, and say: "This is red -- the red." Going further, to mathematically define it, is very narrow. I admit, it made sense to me at first -- I, too, am a technical person. But Van Gogh would set fire to any book that made such a statement. — Xiong熊talk* 08:26, 2005 September 1 (UTC)

I agree: "red" is not a single color. I had been trying to get interest in discussing the proposal to remove CMYK from the color boxes, because it is misleading at best, and only reinforces the wrong idea that a fixed conversion from RGB to CMYK does exist. I have felt this is putting something for the sake of it, rather than understanding the principles. (I have failed completely to engage any discussion. Shall I take silence as indicating I should do it?)
But your discussion makes me feel that does not go far enough. What these color boxes do is try to say that red or cyan is just one color. But indeed, this doesn't reflect the popular view, or reflect any scientific principle. Just an entry in some arbtrary list, for a particular purpose. Someone just picked a color. So I propose the boxes all be removed from all articles. Comments? Perhaps there needs to be, if there already isn't, an article reflecting the popular use of color names in web design, where this stuff (less CMYK of course) belongs. Silence = agreement? Notinasnaid 10:26, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Patience

Well, silence does not imply assent. The fact, to which I'm trying to be sensitive, is that a lot of editing time has been invested in a certain view of color, which includes a myriad of distinct color articles, each with its single-shade swatch. I started my membership in this WikiProject in basic agreement with this view; my first effort was to refine {{web colors}} -- a similar, formal treatment of color that assumes there is exactly one definition for a certain word.

Indeed, in the case of this template, this view is quite correct -- HTML keyword "red" really does mean "turn on your red gun full and the other two off." It doesn't even matter what color is actually generated onscreen -- to descend to another level of detail. The markup used to generate the mini-swatches constitutes a tautology: style="background:red; " -- that is, the web color keyword "red" is illustrated by whatever the user's browser generates when given that word.

Imagine a Martian whose screen displays -- as a matter of course -- everything from short microwaves up to the ultraviolet (because the thinner Martian atmosphere encouraged evolution to bless him with a visual range that wide). Marvy's browser will undoubtedly render the "red" keyword in the short infrared -- invisible to human eyes, though perhaps warm to the touch. Or imagine the Centaur, who -- living at the bottom of a Jovian sea of thick atmosphere -- has adapted to the almost total lack of light in what we think of as the visible range. His browser might vibrate to the touch of his hoof whenever a word was tagged as red -- and indeed, this template would produce the same response. So it is perfect -- as far as that goes.

For me, the trouble began with the text links in that template, just below the mini-swatches. For technical reasons, the "green" gun in a standard CRT excites phosphors that glow with a color best described (to my way of thinking) as acid green. It is a fairly unattractive color, certainly far more vivid than most green shades found in nature or used as pigments by man. It is a poor representative of the family of greens. But it is -- by definition -- "Green" within the world of cathode ray tube technology. W3C thinks otherwise, and named that shade -- that condition of turning that gun on full -- "lime".

Actually, the matter gets even murkier; the most official standards are the least specific. W3C standards are shot through with "browser-specific implementation" and "exact rendering left to the discretion of the user agent".

But long before I got that far, I started to question the whole basis of our thinking about color in this Project. "Green" is not a concept defined by a single shade of green, or a standard controlled by a bunch of Belgians. It's an analog world -- and like most real things, "green" has no sharp boundaries, only a locus of values. Near the locus, some shades are widely accepted; further out, there is disagreement and local usage.

The whole business of CMYK conversion is so intensely technical I wonder if we can possibly treat it properly within the bounds of a general reference work. Are we in some sort of competition with Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics for the greatest number of most impenetrable articles? I was not joking when I said this topic was one of the fastest ways to start a barfight among publishing professionals. It is even more explosive than orphans, kerning, consecutive hyphens, bleeds, and the proper choices among different sizes of dash.

I'm tempted to assert that all CMYK process colors are frauds. There is no such thing as a process blue -- it simply does not exist. Different processes -- and there are many -- use different algorithms for covering paper and other media with patterns of dots of various process inks, and some of these produce illusions of various shades of blue. But this is more of the pettifogging I'd like to get away from. A guy standing in line at the supermarket says, "Hey, that J-Lo sure does look tasty in that blue bikini" -- and to him, that scrap of fabric is blue, never mind that the flesh and the suit she is not quite wearing are both pure fiction. So, yes, no harm to say this-and-that is a kind of process blue. We professionals know there is no such thing, and if there were, then there would be a dozen different ways to get there from here.

I think we really need to face up to the limitations of our chosen medium: GFDL-licensed wiki. We have to assume, primarily, that our content will be viewed through a web browser on any one of a thousand different makes and models of screen, using four or five major families of technology, and under completely uncontrolled lighting conditions. Beyond that, we need to allow for the possibility that somebody will actually go out and do the impossible, and print the damn thing on actual paper -- what paper, we don't know; what inks, we don't know; and we certainly don't know whether the work will be viewed by candlelight, daylight, or sputtering carbon arc.

So we cannot hope to present exact samples or exact definitions of any color. We can realistically talk about what we mean when, while using a given technology, we define a certain color using a certain algorithm and some specific numbers. But what it all boils down to, in the end, is a numbered swatch out of a swatch book. Nobody but an accountant says, "Our logo should be Chinese Red."

It's a Good Thing that we discuss the many meanings of "green", however much they vary and contradict one another. It's quite reasonable to illustrate colors, showing small portions of the great variety of shades that might be brought to mind by the word "Green". It's certainly a public utility to list commonly-used numeric representations of some standard shades of green; I think we should both expand our range and restrict ourselves to a limited number of practical applications -- for instance, Web colors, or Pantone Process. (And yes, there's more than one of those.)

But I've come slowly around to the thought that it's just plain silly for us to try to define any color here.

It may take some time before others get to the same point. Right? — Xiong熊talk* 12:40, 2005 September 2 (UTC)

CMYK + Disclaimer?

I think it is probably nuts not to have *some* kind of CMYK colour listed here. People will come to the colour pages (I did once...) to try and find a colour.

I think that there is a legitimate controversy over CMYK that is well debated here.

So... I suggest that we put in a reasonable value for the major colours, say in the major format (US Web Coated SWOP or whatever the current photoshop default is) with a disclaimer or 'gotcha' linking to a page explaining the problems with the CMYK values as a definitive source.

There must be some more or less agreed values for the major colours somewhere?

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? Do you have a set of basic colors that you would consider publishable? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers, Walkerma 03:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Personal opinion (this seems to be a dormant project because I've never been able to achieve any discussion of these articles): I believe all of the articles on colors have a serious flaw. They do not contain any references; the colors could be made up for all the reader knows. The infobox is also full of context-free numbers. I could not therefore recommend any of them. Some of the articles about color science are good, but they lack consistency. Notinasnaid 08:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for that - I'll note that on our listings. Maybe a simple goal for the project could be getting a basic set of colours up to A-Class? Hopefully in time things will change. I think with minor re-organisation of refs the article Color would be A-Class (i.e., it could be considered as a possible FAC), do you agree? Thanks, Walkerma 16:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Colours

Hi, i'm from the community portal redesign project. We're discussing color options, and i was initially looking around for this: Wikipedia:Colours. I also found you folk, and was wondering if any of you would be interested in helping expand the list of suggested color schemes at Wikipedia:Colours (to maybe 4 or 5 schemes max? that don't clash with each other). In our discussion, we all like the colors at commons:Help:Contents. I'll be adding those (and a few more from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Usability/Color) to Wikipedia:Colours as soon as i can (decipher the tables).

I also thought it might be a page worth adding to your Goal's list, or as something worth watching over. Thanks :-) --Quiddity 05:53, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Progress and regress

Recently there seems to be a movement towards removing entries on colours and it might even be gainisng speed. Since it seems contrary to this project and on suggestion from [[Johan the Ghost seance ]] I am bringing it up here.

The best example is the case of the entry for ecru which had its own entry but now redirects to beige and before that to yellow, see Talk:Yellow#Ecru for more information.

The deleting proposals can be found in the [history file] and can be briefly summarised as 152 other color pages doesn;t show notability, shows we need to do cleanup... this fails notability by only possibly being Wiktionary entry, which already exists followed by no possibility of being anything beyond substub, this is what Wiktionary is for. I cannot find any discussion leading up to wipe and redirect. This suggests another 150 colours are about to be deleted. I for one think this would decrease the usefulness of Wikipedia. --14:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I definitely support your position, that all colour stubs are useful (but need Color-coordinates/swatch infoboxes), and will be slowly expanded, and should not be deleted or merged.
I don't know if anyone else is watchlisting this page, but it does seem the right place to discuss this issue. -Quiddity 17:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I do not support including non-notable colors. I especially do not support making up swatches for them. I support only including colors that are part of a published and non-proprietary standard. I fully support deleting all entries for nonstandardised and non-notable colors. Notinasnaid 11:34, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The notability of a colour is what this is going to center on. What criteria are you suggesting we use?
"Published and non-proprietary" sounds sensible, but that includes hundreds of colours. see List of colors, which is only a tiny selection. Just to pick two randomly: I like the box at the bottom of Prussian blue, and think Camouflage green covers three names with a good start for a stub.
There is a song about the colour Ecru (which is now a redirect, but imo shouldnt be) by Ken Nordine, for example, and it's not a new word:[1].
They're not fan-cruft or similar, so I can't see removing any of those as being beneficial.
However, for an example of a stub that might not belong, see Gray-Tea Green. This doesnt appear to be one of the X11 color names (most of which i would obviously Not advocate creating an article for), and i don't know what colour space it does belong to. -Quiddity 18:57, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am brand new to this project (and with good timing from the looks of it!). I read through a lot of the discussion above, about the proliferation of color pages. The suggestion about having a standard, limited set of "major" colors like red and blue was a good one. They could have the color range swatches that were proposed, and a list of common shades, even including descriptions if appropriate. For example, Beige might list Ecru as a shade, and point out that Ecru tends to be a light, yellow-ish, off-white shade of beige. (Although I'm not sure that I'd put Ecru with Beige so maybe that's a bad example.)
I'm not totally stuck on any particular set of starter colors; maybe going through an 8-pack of crayons and then adding a few other popular ones would be a good start. Then, if we find that a particular color is getting a lot of text with it, we might consider breaking it out. For example, Teal could be included as a shade of (blue? green? what about the color Blue-Green?). If we find that it ends up with three or four paragraphs of description, then it might be worth breaking it out as its own page.
Lastly, on the topic of color swatches. On the one hand, I agree that it seems a little presumptuous to define one definitive "Red". On the other hand, I have come here in the past looking for particular colors, and it was very helpful to see a swatch. Hearing that Puce is "generally considered to be dark red to brownish-purple" was very helpful to me; to see an actual swatch would have been even better. (There is already a swatch there but it looks more like mauve to me, unless that's just my browser.) Standard problems with browser and monitor differences - this is why we used to work only with a few dozen colors on web pages.
Now that I've rambled long enough, I'll end by saying that I think this is a very worthwhile project and one that I'd like to contribute to. I'm going to take a look at the article for Color next, and see about organizing some of the major colors. This project seems to have been dormant for a while; anyone for starting it back up? --Laura S 00:44, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I should clarify what I mean by "standard", since you used it in your reply in a completely different way than I intended. Easily done. To my mind a standard is the result of a standardization process, a recognised list of colors, an "official list" if you like. For example, the HTML/CSS list of colors in web colors is based on a standard; I think the color part of this is good, useful, and encyclopedic. Unfortunately, there has been nothing to stop anyone in Wikipedia deciding that SkyBluePink is a color, creating an article, and putting an info box with some made up colors in it. So I advocate removing all color boxes that do not contain standard values, and removing all non-standard values added for standard colors (for example, CMYK values for colors that were standardised as RGB). We also have to address the issue that multiple important standards might use the same name for different colors. See green as an illustration of this problem. For this reason it is vital that color infoboxes identify the standard that applies. A crucial decision to make is what is considered an acceptable standard. Merely being on the web is not enough; I have found many pages with new made-up lists. Notinasnaid 09:57, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
More: I have to say that the example of a pack of crayons is the exact opposite of what I think should be happening. You and I have no way to measure those colors accurately, nor any reason to declare that this blue crayon is a standard for blue. I do see a conflict here, and it is important to resolve this. There are really two outlooks being taken onto the color project: scientific, based on color science, measurement, standards; and artistic, based on a desire to work with colors. Both are valuable, and as someone whose head is more into color science I recognise that the artistic outlook is important and sincere. A lot of work has been done, too, and I respect that but at the same time, Wikipedia's policies have to be considered. I have several times seen a statement like "it's important that Wikipedia include some value and sample for each color." The implication being that some color is more important than accuracy. But Wikipedia has an absolute rule of verifiability: making up some color, or picking a personal favorite between several is the dreaded original research. So I couldn't agree with this statement less. It is very important Wikipedia does not include some kind of value for a color unless it is in the context of a well defined (and well explained) standard. No articles that I have seen meet this criterion. I don't think a "head in the sand" approach can work here; as Wikipedia matures its policies are being more rigorously enforced, and if the color boxes are to survive in any form, they need to change to a verifiable approach. I'd like to add that I'm very glad to see this project come back from the dead; various attempts have been made to deal with these issues without raising any interest at all. Notinasnaid 10:07, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've been giving some thought as to how to bridge the artistic/scientific gap. While Red is included in many color standards, and could have an infobox, my favorite illustration of red is #Red (color) above. This clearly shows a range of reds. Now, what about ecru? My initial research throws up a dictionary definition but no standard. Clearly on that basis (my arguments above would suggest that) we can't have an infobox because there is no standardised color. But how about a photograph of something that is in the fabric ecru? Indeed, ecru is by its dictionary definition first a fabric, second its color. There is also I believe a standardised cotton color. This is no good for info boxes, unless the makers provide an absolute color reference for it, but we could photograph a hank of the cotton. Notinasnaid 10:59, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, for a project that didn't raise much interest for so long, we seem to have generated quite a bit of it now. (For the record, I count that as a good thing.) We seem to be having several discussions in one thread, which is a little confusing. I have a feeling it's also making it seem like we all disagree more than we actually do. For the purposes of clarity, I'm going to attempt to break some of these discussions out so we can give them the focus they deserve. -- Laura S | talk to me 22:47, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scientific vs. artistic

There seems to be a rift between defining and describing color from a scientific point of view and an artistic one. As Notinasnaid said, "There are really two outlooks being taken onto the color project: scientific, based on color science, measurement, standards; and artistic, based on a desire to work with colors. Both are valuable..."

As a matter of disclosing any bias I might have, I come more from the artistic standpoint, but find the scientific view interesting as well. In considering readers, there will be some looking for each type of information. I think our challenge (and value) lies in representing both of these views adequately and in a complementary fashion. Having said all that, I'm not sure what the solution is; only that I'm up for trying to find one. -- Laura S | talk to me 23:04, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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