This is just a quick little thing that has really been nagging me and I have to tell somebody.
Yesterday two people where fumbling over the colour green. Not green itself, but the values for it. As soon as I arrived, they asked me for the values.
My first question was about format. RGB values 0-255 or what?
Yes, RGB values 0-255.
So i rattled them off real quick. Pure reflex.
But the thing that has been bothering me about this whole thing is that I didn't bother asking what the green was for. Pure green, like I gave them, could very well have been way too much. Maybe they needed something a little more Earthy with a tint of yellow. Or even a pastel. There was no context or design consideration.
Too late now. Hopefully next time my reflexes will be in the right place.
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 01-12-2007 15:44
The first thing that jumped into my head was; who's asking the question, male or female?? as more men than women are likely to be colour blind.
There's something in the back of my brain telling me people have more trouble with green than any other colour and this bit here sort of confirms that:
quote:Many forms of so-called colorblindness are really natural variations in the proteins. Just as some people have brown or blue eyes, different people have different pigments in their L- and M- cones. People's ability to discern colors varies with difference in the absorption maxima of the cones. Generally, the ability to discern reds and greens decreases when the absoprtion maxima of the cones is more similar. Altered sensitivity in one cone type is known as an anomalous trichromacy. This occurs when there is variation in the cone pigments, caused by a difference in their amino acid sequence. The human red and green color vision pigments are identical at all but 15 of their 364 amino acids, and yet their absorption maxima differ by 31 nm. The spectral difference between these 2 pigments is determined by 7 and only 7 amino acid residues.
Protans and deutans can be anomalous trichromats or dichromats. There are no S-cone anomalous trichromats, so tritans are always dichromats.
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"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." Mark Twain
Well if the people were talking about 'green' in a computer related context I think your answer was correct. People's color sensitivity is a different topic.
In Korean (and other NE Asian languages), the boundary between blue and green is quite fluid. For example, the same color term is used to describe the color of the sea/sky and the color of forested mountains in summer. Also, green traffic lights are the same color as bluebirds. Then again, a yellowish green is known as an entirely different color.
The English color term "pink" has been adopted here as an alternative for the native Korean (actually, Chinese-based) "bunhong"/粉紅(which literally means something like "powdery red"). In isolation, the two colors are identical. But '"bunhong" is considered a more "traditional" color and would be used to describe the color of traditional Korean clothes, whereas "pink" is more "modern" and would be used to describe the color of a Western-style dress. One person told me that "bunhong" sounds "rustic," while "pink" is "sophisticated."
This may be a little off topic, but I've always been fascinated by the different cultural perceptions of color, and I thought it was relevant here.
Nah, not off topic one bit. Been awhile since we've an open, running conversation.
A couple weeks ago I have several brief chats with several different women about lingerie colours. While I can come up with a colour scheme, I was looking into the colour schemes of lingerie. I was assuming the basic concepts were the same, but I wanted some particulars. What colour lingerie would look good with a given complexion and hair colour? Apparently women have there own common nomenclature when it comes to colours.
Me: What colour lingerie for this complexion and hair colour?
Woman: Oh, you want a rich colour.
Me: What is a 'rich' colour?
Woman: ...
Pretty much the end of that conversation because she didn't speak RGB or HSL.
Me: What colour lingerie for this complexion and hair colour?
Woman: For that, you want Earth tones.
Me: You mean like dark greens and browns?
Woman: No, I mean Earth tones.
Me: ...
And the gap widened that much further. Or is it farther? Either way, end of conversation.
I'm gonna have to pick me up a translator one of these days. Any women in the Asylum want to help bridge this gap?
BTW, I gave up on the green guys. They weren't interested in other considerations, so whatever.
Heh. Just goes to show you how people in the same culture can speak entirely different languages.
Did you try presenting her with a bunch of swatches and asking her to pick out "rich" colors and earth tones? I'm especially curious on the second one. "Earth tones" is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but I've never actually heard anyone explain it. I guess everyone just comes to their own conclusion--leading to difficulties such as yours.
For the record, dictionary.com gives two definitions:
"Any of various warm, muted colors ranging basically from neutral to deep brown."
"Any of various rich warm colors with tones of brown."
So basically we're dealing with brown, although what kind of brown is not exactly clear. I get the warm part--even I can grasp the concept of warm and cold colors. The first definition say they are "muted," though, while the second definition says they are "rich." How do you explain terms like this in RGB or HSL. My first thought would be that "rich" colors are highly saturated colors, but that can't be everything. Maybe you need a lot of saturation and not too much luminosity for a rich color. That would be my best guess. And what about muted? I've heard this term used with color a lot, but I realize now that I don't really know what it means. Again, dictionary.com has this to say:
to mute: "to reduce the intensity of (a color) by the addition of another color."
Hmm... so I guess in terms of RGB a muted color would not be a pure color... but brown isn't a "pure" color anyway, not in the RGB of CMYK color models. I suppose it is referring to mixing pigments, but I don't know how any of this helps figure out what a "muted" color really is.
A quick scan of Google Image results for "earth tones" shows that people have a wide variety of opinions on the matter. Some people stick to the brown theory, whereas others toss in dark greens and reds. I suppose, like other color terms, it really is rather subjective. Probably the only way of guaranteeing that you're going to get the color your clients want is to have them pick from color swatches--even then, though, you have to deal with the difference in color perception depending on surrounding colors. Color swatches are often shown in isolation, but colors themselves rarely appear that way in designs.
My heard hurts now.
(Crap. I just noticed that the Chinese characters in my previous post came out as numeric entities. I believe reisio posted something about this recently, but I can't remember what the answer was.)
Several years ago (late '80s early '90s) someone came up with the idea of matching peoples clothing to their skin tones. A whole language of color, unrelated to other vocabularies of expressing color, sprang up around this phenomenon. There was an entire industry of people making money from telling you what color clothing to wear.
I think that most of the words you are hearing are related to or derived from that color language. Other terms you will often hear in that regard are winter, spring, summer and autumn tones.
When you use the terms, I see a whole range of colors in my head associated with each term, but I'm not sure they are correct. I suppose I could check with Bobbins to see if my perceptions agree with hers.
Grrr! Here's one that gets on my nerves and did so just the other day.
What is up with hair colour?
Me: What is her hair colour?
Her: She is a blonde.
I mean, WTF? She doens't have a hair colour - she is a hair colour.
Strawberry blonde - who invented that one?
I suspect the French had something to do with the hair colour thing. You know, one of those lost in translation things. And, for the record, I blame Madonna for the dirty blonde thing.
When I think Earth tones, I think Earth as is dirt and vegetation. Apparently most think earth as in just dirt.
And I really hate the seasonal thing. Might as well use Zodiac colours, or elemental colours. How about a colour scheme based on Tiamat, the Queen of Metallic Dragons? Wait, that has already been done with the likes of teal.
quote:When I think Earth tones, I think Earth as is dirt and vegetation. Apparently most think earth as in just dirt.
You are thinking in terms of the proper noun 'Earth', whereas the primary use in terms of the color of clothing is for the general noun 'earth' which bascially means....dirt.
posted 01-12-2007 14:46
