Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Color/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Color. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

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Archive 5

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:

Lab color space

CIE-1931

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)

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 #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 #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)

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.

I agree that Pantone colors should not be referenced. Their ink managing system is there to make colors that otherwise can't be reproduced in various gamuts. It just confuses the issue and makes more work when focus should be on the already annoying issue of CMYK representation. Besides. we could get into actual legal trouble by actually representing them and showing colors.MiracleMat 03:50, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

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)