Quote Originally Posted by usonian View Post
Gauging colors from mill to mill on a computer monitor is a tricky business - there are many factors that can affect how a tartan looks in a photograph (photo exposure, white balance, digital manipulation of contrast/levels/color balance, monitor calibration, etc.) - it's definitely worth narrowing your choices down to a handful of candidates based on web images, and then ordering swatches so you can see exactly what they look like in real life.
Absolutely right. But if I may, a point of correction on terminology. People often confuse colour and shade and use them interchangeably, especially colour when they mean shade and this often leads those with less knowledge to refer to clan x as having two tartans; a dark one and a bright one for instance. The two examples shown by Paul are the same colour but they are woven in different shades. Red is red etc but qualified as light, dark and so on. Where it gets interesting is when one strays into the realm of Reproduction and Weathered tartans where the colours have actually been changed. Technically one could argue that they are different tartans, especially the Weathered range – I’ve never seen an example of an old piece actually fading like either an don’t see how the traditional dyes would fade/stain un-uniformly like the two ranges suggest.