Colors and their RGB Values

[Quixus]

Do those colors look like that in real life, if you use the values from the Colors PDF, or are the v9 painter's values closer? Chaos Black for example is not black but a greenish blue. It looks good though.

[WingsOfTheFalcon]

RGB and Hex are never good measures for painted colours as they specifically relate to digital representations.

 

Usually you would use a Pannetone reference for painted colours or in the worst case CYMK which is used py printers.

 

The pdf would be useful if you were building a website and wanted to get a close fit, but it wouldn't be an exact match as monitors tend to display the hex/rgb slightly differently.

[Quixus]

What's a Pannetone reference?

[averykess]

RGB is used for additive colors, like older projection screen televisions. For reflective (subtractive) colors like painted/printed surfaces, you use Red Yellow Blue (also known as CMYK color model as WingsOfTheFalcon points out). Monitors and Televisions use color mixing, where the pixels are so small it fools the eye, but also use the RGB colors.

 

This is why RGB generally wont work as a painting formula for minis.

 

Pantone is a company that produces color paint chips bound in fans. These are used by graphic artists, interior decorators, and anyone who wants an accurate color sample. They look like this:

http://bathpromotions.com/uploads/images/pantone-color-swatches.jpg

[Quixus]

Any idea how I can get a pretty good preview on screen?

[CarbonCopy]

Any idea how I can get a pretty good preview on screen?

 

Reliably? No.

 

You can rack up 50 of the same, exact make and model monitor and get 50 different results from the same source.

 

I work in printing. I color correct dozens of very large, very complex files every day (and print them onto fabric up to 10 feet wide and as long as you want).

 

There are people with PHDs who have been studying the reproduction of color all their adult lives who admit they still can't get it right. That's why exhaustive standardized systems like Pantone, RAL and Natural Color System exist.

 

If you want color that is "sort of" close (being off by as much as +/- 5% in any one direction and usually more than one), you need to correctly calibrate the color of your display. Mac users have it easy, especially those with "all-in-one" computers like the iMac or a Mac laptop. Those machines come with default color profiles that are already pretty good. PC users, on the other hand, have it hard as there are literally millions of permutations of hardware combinations -- so no reliable default calibration exists.

 

There are many, many very useful tools online that can assist in this process, but none of them are really very good for one very specific reason. They will get you close to a properly calibrated monitor. If you calibrate the monitor on a Windows or Linux based system, you will see different color with the same file open in different applications. That's because color correction does not reside at the core level of the Windows and Linux operating system. Individual applications cannot tap into anything to verify the integrity of the file's color and adjust as needed to a specific color profile -- the main failing of people tying to use Windows as a graphic design platform.

 

There are also expensive hardware/software combinations that you can sink as little as a few hundred dollars into, up to several thousands of dollars. They work reasonably well most of the time. The one failing on a windows systems has already been mentioned.

 

This is all speaking from experience and extensive research out of on-the-job necessity. If anyone tells you otherwise, they have not properly researched the subject.

 

Do a Google search for "calibrate monitor color" and you'll start to scratch the surface of how deep the question you have asked really is.

 

Edit:

 

One more detail...

 

If you are trying to accurately preview someone else' photo on a calibrated monitor, you are assuming the person who took the photo has accurately color calibrated the image on a correctly calibrated system. The odds of that are highly unlikely. Remember, I deal with this stuff every day at work.

[Gurth]

The pdf would be useful if you were building a website and wanted to get a close fit, but it wouldn't be an exact match as monitors tend to display the hex/rgb slightly differently.

Want an easy way to see this for yourself? Fiddle around with the brightness, contrast, etc. of your display. This should show you that you can't even be sure of the colours on your own screen …

[Quixus]

So basically all you can do is look at a RL color chart or the actual paint on Plastic/metal, right?

[WingsOfTheFalcon]

In short yes, you will never get a accurate digital representation of the paint colour due to the variety mentioned in hardware. What looks like one colour on our screen will look totally different on someone elses.