"naming" colors on photoshop?

Digger1 · Post by **Digger1** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 5:52 pm

I want to "name" the RGB colors on photoshop so they reflect the color of paint swatches by companies like Testors, Humbrol and Tamya.

Is this possible?

iSteve · Post by **iSteve** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 6:08 pm

Yes, but painstaking and probably expensive for you. On-screen colours and physical colours are never an exact match and depending on how you have your screen calibrated will probably not look the same on-screen as the next guy's. The equipment needed to sample each colour is not cheap.

You can eyeball it by holding up a swatch to the screen, but chances are you will get a big surprise when you print it out. Home printers (even pro-shops) can vary considerably.

Why do you want to do this?

Digger1 · Post by **Digger1** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 6:36 pm

http://www.playingmantis.com/pl/color/T ... rylic).pdf
A-ha!
I want to select the most predominant color of a reference pic and get the closest name so I know where to start when I mix custom colors.
I'll just use the dropper (color selector) tool to sample the color and then name it.

Now, how to do it?

guess you need to cut and paste the link into your browser bar

Kylwell · Post by **Kylwell** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 6:40 pm

Ah, what you want to do is create a set of custom colors much like the Pantone lookup system.

Here's the instructions.

http://photoshop911.typepad.com/help/20 ... _load.html

iSteve · Post by **iSteve** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 9:58 am

kylwell wrote:Ah, what you want to do is create a set of custom colors much like the Pantone lookup system.

Here's the instructions.

http://photoshop911.typepad.com/help/20 ... _load.html

I think what Mike wants to do is take a colour sample via the eyedropper in Photoshop of, say, a photo of a ship, and match it to the Testors digital colour palette.

Mike, I would sample each colour from the Testors palette and get the RGB mix for each. You can then get the closest match from the colour sample of a photo by comparing RGB formulas.

Kylwell · Post by **Kylwell** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 10:07 am

But, you can eyedrop the Testors pallet and save it as a swatch to build your own set of custom colors.

That way, when he's eye-dropping a color from another picture he can switch from the color picker to a custom color and get somethign close to it in Testors.

Digger1 · Post by **Digger1** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 2:17 pm

When I'm through, would anyone like to be sent the palettes?

Maybe 1-0 will see fit to post them on the site for download?

Quintillus · Post by **Quintillus** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 1:56 am

I was trying something similar in large scale. I design theatre scenery for a living. As an experiment, I had taken a color elevation that I had painted in a PhotoShop type program, used the eyedropper to select the base color on my elevation, and then compared the RGB values to those from the Glidden paint line (swatches on teh website). I found a color that was almost exact, and had it mixed up at the Depot.

End result: I ended up mixing my own color into it to get anywhere near what I was originally going for.

Suffuce it to say, I've never done that again. I just print it, make sure I like it, then pull out the fandeck.