Blue or Purple?

[Paul Henry]

The Scottish Register of Tartans gives some advice here
Guidance in Registering a tartan Scroll down to the "colour codes" section,
they keep a record of the RGB or hexadecimal codes.
this is of course not saying that the actual weaver will uses exactly those codes, but at least the reference should be accurate in the actual Register

[mookien]

robbiethepiper: I don't have a clue what to make of your experience. Perhaps the weavers can't, or simply don't feel the need to, duplicate colors across thread sizes. Maybe dyeing technology is not as "precise" as computerized loom technology.

If the last sentence is true (I really have no idea), then that might explain a lot. Because, even if a tartan designer specified their desired colors via RGB codes, but the dyers could not consistently reproduce a given RGB color, then all tartans are merely an approximation of the designers ideal.

[Brian K]

Brian K: Have you looked at the Silver Thistle on the Scottish Register of Tartans, ie

http://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tar....aspx?ref=3789

All three representations of it appear distinctly purple to me. I'm not claiming it should appear the same to you. If you see it as blue, then our eyes are seeing the color differently.

Also, just to clarify, when I look at the woven sample of the ST tartan, the bands in question are distinctly blue, not purple. (Though again, my son said he could see a bit of purple in them.) It is when I look at the picture posted above that I can see a slight purple hue in the blue bands.

I looked at that sample multiple times and it has always looked blue to me. Of course, it could be your monitor, mine, or both.

[kennethrmc]

"What you see you may not get, so get the tartan". Spot on!

[mookien]

paulhenry: Thank you for your persistence in trying to enlighten me and keep my thinking straight. It may not seem so to you, but it does help. :-)

First, let me assure you that I am aware of subjective color perception, optical illusions (I have a folder of them), and the surrounding-color effect.

When I started this thread, I was merely interested in why the rendering of the same tartan on STA and SRT looks so different (to me anyway - don't ask Brian K.), naively assuming that there was a relatively simple answer - transcription error, for example.

When it became obvious (thanks to you and others) that there was no single, simple reason, my shallow river of thinking meandered a bit (thanks to Downunder Kilt's post and Matt's "orange is considered red" bowling ball) onto the question of how designers specify colors, how those colors are mapped, and how precisely they are reproduced.

With hindsight I probably should have started a new post, but c'est le blog! While the SRT encourages folks to submit RGB or hex codes, it does not require them to do so. Apparently, it still allows novel color names like Dirty Old Gold, as long as they are accompanied by a "detailed description of the shades", whatever that entails. Finally, even its rather simple color pallet is inconsistent with others. For example, #603311 is called "Tan (brown)" on the SRT, but "Baker's Chocolate" on Scotweb's pallet. :-)

[Paul Henry]

To me, and others the colour you originally saw as purple, many of rest of us saw more as blue ( albeit with a purplish tinge) so to us the fact that it was called blue was fine and not in any way surprising, but perhaps we also accepted that tartan colours are generally kept simple in terms of basic colour name.
Just as there is no accepted colour system for tartan colours, there is no accepted colour naming system, so anyone can name any colour whatever they want, and people who name colours on a paint chart constantly do, so the fact that the same colour exists on different systems but with differnt names, doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
Any artist or designer working with colour, do so in a slightly different way to each other, this is normal and natural, it's very much an organic and subjective process. I don't think it will ever be possible to make any system which will work across all substrates to make colour matching perfect,simply put the same colours on different substrates never look exactly the same.
I do understand what you are trying to get at, but I can't help feel that you are actually trying to square the circle, sorry but I think you would be so much better off looking at the actual samples, than comparing RGB/Hex/monitor/name codes!