re: #383 CuriousLurker

It wasn’t that easy. As gdfrank pointed out, the colors’ hue seems to shift depending on the surrounding colors.

In preparation for art journaling I’ve been doing some color mixing lately, so I happen to be really aware of hue lately. It’s fascinating and often surprising what happens when you mix certain colors.

It also matters a lot when you’re getting something printed in a 4 (or more) color process too—a 5% shift in the saturation of a color may or may not be a huge deal, depending on the hue. That’s something I imagine you’re very much aware of when printing your photographs.

For the Mac using Lizards here’s a good, cheap color picker that really helps. I understand why people trust their own perceptions and think monitor calibration is the most important element in a design or photographic workflow, but they’re just flat out wrong. Your brain is lying to you every single second, only the numbers are real. Math is your friend.

I consistently score in the single digits on the X-Rite test, calibrate all my equipment, religiously anchor every location and lighting situations with Gretag-Macbeth charts and still don’t believe a goddamned thing my brain is telling me about color. I’ve worked in very high workflow situations where you have to just make it look good as fast as possible and not pay much attention to the numbers, but everyone involved knew we where were making a conscious choice to cut corners.