HSV Color Space Not Realistic

[denverpotsmoker]

I've been trying to "recreate" a skin for AllMyNotes by changing the colors.

 

The original skin font is shades of gray. I want to change them to green.

 

Due to anti-aliasing, this ends up being many shades of gray which I

will make many shades of green (hopefully looking as good as the original

but green instead of gray).

 

That said, I tried using HSV...as with the gray colors, mostly just the V changes.

With green, I tried to compute how much S would be equivalent.

That is: Making Gray Lighter = More V

             Making Green Lighter = Less S

 

I've even "read up" on HSV color system some. Very mathematical.

 

Didn't really work too well, so now I'll just "eye" the colors.

 

Which made me wonder why this system is used in the first place. In

"real life", if one wants a lighter shade of a color, doesn't one usually add white?

To make darker, add black?

 

Isn't this is the way painters have done for centuries?

Yet this is NOT done in any graphx program (such as Paint.net).

Why?

 

You know, if computer color systems were done more like real world painters do it,

then perhaps people could learn how to mix colors in the "real world" as

they were using the programs to make things for computers. (Just a Thought).

 

Also, why is the color palette so small? I'll just stick with a pdn file and the color

picker.

 

[Eli]

"In"real life", if one wants a lighter shade of a color, doesn't one usually add white? To make darker, add black?"

 

A few years ago, I went to a Walmart store and asked for the whitest white paint. I was told that "titanium white" was very white.  To my surprise, when mixing the paint,  the salesman started adding a "black pigment" to an already white base. And what do you know, the paint became even whiter.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Eli

[pdnnoob]

The reason it is done differently here than it is with paints is that the program is not simulating paints to begin with. It simulates light.

That is why the primary colors are red, blue, and green rather than magenta, cyan, and yellow. This in mind, the system used in the program makes a whole lot more sense.

[Red ochre]

Yes colour space is complicated!

Mixing pigments is 'subractive' and is different to mixing light which is 'additive'.
Eg.red paint + green paint = dark brown (if using decent pigments)
red light + green light (pixels) = yellow.

There used to be three good white pigments (for oil paints): Lead, Titanium and Zinc.
They all behave differently in paint mixtures. Lead has great opacity, zinc is the whitest and titanium is good in mixtures.
Unfortunately lead carbonate is discouraged (almost banned) in paint these days... which is sensible for household paint but a real nuisance for artist's paints.
Lead is only poisonous if ingested (eaten or dust inhaled) but who eats oil paintings?
I bought some flake white (lead based) a year ago in London (under the counter) it was expensive but it is irreplaceable. When that's gone I will have no choice but to make my own!.. I don't see that as a safer alternative?

All the best colours come from poisonous metal compounds - Cobalt(blue), Cadmium-selenium sulphides (yellows and reds) even mercury 'cinnabar' (red). Lead and cobalt also act as 'driers' in oil paint.
Computers and car batteries are full of toxic metals... but their manufacturers have more political power.

Rant over.

[Eli]

Red, do you bath with flake white ?

[Red ochre]

I would do - lovely creamy stuff!
Almost every oil painting since the VanEycks used it ... till now.
I used to get smothered in the stuff as a kid ... and they used to put lead in petrol too!
Amazing I'm still alive really!

[TechnoRobbo]

That said, I tried using HSV...as with the gray colors, mostly just the V changes.

With green, I tried to compute how much S would be equivalent.

That is: Making Gray Lighter = More V

Making Green Lighter = Less S

 

V= Brightness or the base that the color tint gets added to. if V =100 (very white) then Less S (saturation or tint) would make S lighter. If V =0 (or Black) then Less S or more S is Black. V is like adding Black paint or White Paint to the mix. S is like adding more tint to the Base. In those terms HSV is closer to paint than you think.

 

 

Which made me wonder why this system is used in the first place. In

"real life", if one wants a lighter shade of a color, doesn't one usually add white?

To make darker, add black?

That's not HSV, that's RGB .If one has colored lights in dark room then black = darkness or lights off. You can't add darkness you can only turn off brightness. That's how RGB works.

 

In both case of HSV and RGB - they are realistic, just not the same frame of reference.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

That's not HSV, that's RGB .If one has colored lights in dark room then black = darkness or lights off. You can't add darkness you can only turn off brightness. That's how RGB works.

 

Nicely put TR.

[MJW]

HSV is designed with an additive color model in mind, because computer images use additive colors. If you want to think of HSV in terms of mixing Black, White, and Colored paint (with White + Black + Colored = 1 unit of paint), then, assuming S and V range from zero to one:

Black = 1 - V

White = (1 - S) * V

Colored = S * V.

(H is the color of the colored paint.)

 

Computing HSV from colored paint:

V = 1 - Black = White + Colored

S = Colored / (White + Colored)

 

If you want to think of it as mixing colored paint with gray paint:

Colored = S * V

Gray = 1 - S * V

Darkness of gray paint (0 for white, 1 for black): (1 - V) / (1 - S * V)

Edited September 1, 2015 by MJW

[denverpotsmoker]

Yeah! This is EXACTLY the type of discussion that is great for our graphics programs.

 

I'd like to see this extend to televisions, where movies are released with their own customized

palettes (hopefully based on paint colours available on the commercial market).

 

You know, the BEST place to start with base paints is what is most available (most used) in the agricultural

market (ie, the plants used for your palette). For example, some might have a base blue color made

from a crop of Woad plant grown in Israel, others might not.

 

I'm sure with non-standardized graphics cards and monitors, it makes all this very difficult.

I just think it would be cooler if graphics color was done more like painters, and less like

light theorists.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tints_and_shades

 

Thanks for the input!

Edited September 2, 2015 by denverpotsmoker

[david.atwell]

That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.  Despite the name, Paint.NET doesn't actually use any paint.  :-)  It's actually working with light, so for it to be as accurate as it can be, it needs to work with the light color model.

 

Also, that's the standard for all graphics editing programs (except those that deal with print primarily).  It would be weird to give PdN something different from the industry standard.

[MJW]

I find the relationship between color spaces and paint colors quite interesting, actually. In real life, of course, paints behave very differently than would be expected from RGB-based color spaces, because real light comprises a wide spectrum rather than just three three distinct colors, and real paints reflect differently over that spectrum. Art books claim blue and yellow are primary hues, which mixed together form green, even though RGB subtractive theory says the result should be black. Though the art book claim has always been somewhat naive, and it's difficult to get something close to pure green by mixing blue and yellow, there's no doubt that the result of mixing blue and yellow paint is normally a lot more green than it is black. That's true even when the blue is a true blue, and doesn't tend toward cyan.

[denverpotsmoker]

That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.  Despite the name, Paint.NET doesn't actually use any paint.  :-)  It's actually working with light, so for it to be as accurate as it can be, it needs to work with the light color model.

 

Also, that's the standard for all graphics editing programs (except those that deal with print primarily).  It would be weird to give PdN something different from the industry standard.

 

Yeah, it is all true and I really doubt paint.net (nor any other digital graphics program) would be able to change from a light color model to a plant/pigment-based color model.

 

Yet, as someone who has always wanted to be better at mixing paint, it sure would be cool and I look forward to a new computing system and programs.

 

Also, if done right, I think it would really increase graphics creativity AND help people to be better artists in the real world...for example: these new buildings that are going up everywhere will all need custom artwork (you know), and so will everyone's house(s).

 

[david.atwell]

Yeah, it is all true and I really doubt paint.net (nor any other digital graphics program) would be able to change from a light color model to a plant/pigment-based color model.

 

Yet, as someone who has always wanted to be better at mixing paint, it sure would be cool and I look forward to a new computing system and programs.

 

Also, if done right, I think it would really increase graphics creativity AND help people to be better artists in the real world...for example: these new buildings that are going up everywhere will all need custom artwork (you know), and so will everyone's house(s).

There are programs that simulate pigment-based color systems (programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc); however, they're only simulations until you print them out, because your monitor uses the light color model. And there's not really any way around that.

[denverpotsmoker]

Yeah, there would have to be a standardization of graphics cards and monitors so that (at least without monitor/card adjustment) all colors in a distributed palette appear the same on all devices. This would ensure that the artists' conceptualization is delivered in the way intended by the artist, and not changed by the electronics.

 

Somewhat off topic:

Wouldn't it be funny if you had to purchase color for paint.net? So, if you messed up on something (just like real life), you'd have to purchase more color to continue your project? Just being silly on that one.

Edited September 9, 2015 by denverpotsmoker

[david.atwell]

Yeah, there would have to be a standardization of graphics cards and monitors so that (at least without monitor/card adjustment) all colors in a distributed palette appear the same on all devices. This would ensure that the artists' conceptualization is delivered in the way intended by the artist, and not changed by the electronics.

Worse than that, there's actually no real way to make it work. Color is incredibly subjective, so calibrating to the human eye is a terrible idea. That means you need an objective, numerical (for computers, remember) standard. Which means you're left with the CMYK color model or the RGB color model. Since the pixels in a monitor are already red, green and blue, you have to make it RGB before the person sees it anyway. So why waste time with CMYK?

Somewhat off topic:

Wouldn't it be funny if you had to purchase color for paint.net? So, if you messed up on something (just like real life), you'd have to purchase more color to continue your project? Just being silly on that one.

It would make this a very expensive hobby.

[TechnoRobbo]

subjective