How do you choose WHICH color a car is from its photo?

[jason_stanfield]

Hello, fellow GTA car nerds. Short time lurker, first time poster.

 

Much thanks to the Zanthera and other contributors in the Kustom Crew Color Request topic for an avalanche of knowledge. I'm a kid in a candy store now that I know how to mod custom colors!!

 

On to my question:

 

I definitely know how to use the eyedropper tool in Photoshop to select a color, but when we're talking about the color of pixels in an image vs. how we perceive the color of the object in the image, it becomes complicated.

 

Take this screenshot of the 2016 Alfa Romeo 4C Spider Coupe, in Prototype Yellow (Giallo Prototipo), taken from their website.

 

It's obviously a deep yellow, without any perceptible orange influence, and not dark enough to hint at brown. Ignoring the areas of obvious glare and shadow, I have chosen 12 potential sites for what the actual color of the car is. Yet clearly there's still a wide variety of yellows to choose from - some very middle-of-the-road yellow, others lean towards gold, peach, lemon, etc.

 

I'm tempted to think FEC842 - in bold - is the closest, but I'm not quite sure. (Plus I'm currently at work, 5.5 hours from being able to test this on my system.)

 

How do I figure out which one it is? I imagine there's no science to finding the "objective" color of a car from a photo like this, but experimenting with this is all about finding as many shortcuts as possible, and I'd appreciate any advice you guys can give as to how I can quickly find the "correct" color.

 

I've only been at this a couple of weeks now, and I'm just starting to get a feel for how far to compensate in brightness because of the way GTA presents these hex values in the game. I'm even starting to get a feel for how to adjust hue and saturation to get closer. There are so many areas to consider, though -- like how my laptop is a MacBook with a bright Retina display, but my TV is a cheap Best Buy store brand Insignia, and how I'm red-green colorblind -- so any help in narrowing at least THIS part of it would be bigly appreciated.

 

 

Edited April 5, 2017 by jason_stanfield

[A Maned Wolf]

I take at least two samples from the light, dark, and blended sections of the car and compare them to get the color I desire.

[FaultyDroid]

You gotta bear in mind that if the light source in that photo moved just a few degrees in any direction, all of those panels you've picked out on the left will either switch places or become new colours entirely, not to mention that no two people you are asking on this forum will have identical saturation / brightness setups on their monitor / phone displays.

 

If your asking anyone to pick out a colour on the left that closests resembles the car.. Even if you got five answers the same, theres technically no guarantee those five guys are all seeing the same colour.

 

As Maned Wolf said, best to find a happy medium from lightest / darkest I guess.

 

If im misunderstanding the question however, then let me know..

 

edit: if you'd like another opinion though, of those twelve IMO the colour you picked out is the closest representative of the overall colour of the car.

Edited April 6, 2017 by FaultyDroid

[rtie]

I've found that the colours I choose are always much lighter then they originally appear. So I usually go for one of the darker areas.

[C64fanatic]

I've found that the colours I choose are always much lighter then they originally appear. So I usually go for one of the darker areas.

That's the right way to do it. Try to find a spot that has no shine. The result will still be a lot brighter in-game because for whatever reason the game brightens all colors. Usually I make a color about 40% darker and try it out in-game, but it varies.

[C64fanatic]

-snip-

...not to mention that no two people you are asking on this forum will have identical saturation / brightness setups on their monitor / phone displays.

If your asking anyone to pick out a colour on the left that closests resembles the car.. Even if you got five answers the same, theres technically no guarantee those five guys are all seeing the same colour.

-snip-

You nailed the main reason right there why I stopped taking requests from people in the color request thread. Even if I got a color spot on other people could still see a different color because of varies reasons. It could be very frustrating. Hats off to those who still do it. Edited April 6, 2017 by C64fanatic

[No Use For A Name]

I have another question along the same lines - How do figure out colors on cars that have pearls? Seems like adding the extra variable would make it difficult. It's pretty easy to guess what color pearl to use base on a picture, but how can you "extract" only the base color? Seems like a sh*t ton of trial and error

[ZANTHERA]

I always go with the darkest part of the car where there is the purist color, no reflection, no glare, an area of the car where there is a large group of either the same or very closely colored pixels.

 

You need to start from there as the goal is to make the car look like at the darkest point in game, that is the reason some colors cannot be picked if there is no decent point to pick from due to it being either too reflective or having too many sharp points of light on it.

 

For this car in particular i'd pick from the front around the edges of the V in the grille, this seems to be the best area as it's not being exposed to too much light and the reflection from the ground is not interfering, to some this may seem like a bad starting point as it looks far darker than the rest of the car but you must remember that GTA for some reason displays dark colors a lot brighter than you'd see it on a color picker.

[jason_stanfield]

Thanks for all the responses, guys. I'm getting a bit better at this every day.

 

As Maned Wolf said, best to find a happy medium from lightest / darkest I guess.

 

No, you understand me just fine.

 

As for the points on the sample photo, I just went by the shades available, not the part of the car (i.e. hood, doors, roof). I was doing as Maned Wolf said -- sampling lighter, darker, and medium, and trying to find a happy medium -- but I was losing nuance.

 

For instance, I did a green for someone in the Kustom thread earlier, and it took me a long while to realize that there's a little blue in it (via RGB). I was eyeballing it for a while, then resampled and realized that everywhere in the photo there was between a 5:1 and 3:1 ratio of green to blue. I started over, found the right brightness of green (002300), then started mixing blue in - and evidently I need to go back and try it again because it's too yellow.

 

I've found that the colours I choose are always much lighter then they originally appear. So I usually go for one of the darker areas.

 

The darker areas are a little problematic for me, since the pixels can vary wildly from a deep saturation to a low saturation. I did try using Photoshop's posterizing function, but all that really does is reduce the available number of colors, and they default to web-safe right away.

More trial and error, I suppose.

 

I have another question along the same lines - How do figure out colors on cars that have pearls? Seems like adding the extra variable would make it difficult. It's pretty easy to guess what color pearl to use base on a picture, but how can you "extract" only the base color? Seems like a sh*t ton of trial and error

 

While I'm obviously not great at this yet, you have to learn to see the image as a blob of colors, and look beyond the shape and texture. You're sampling a pixel, not a finish.

 

Not every car has a pearl -- it just might be really glossy and the lighting conditions make it especially reflective. Try to figure out which angle the light source is by where the glare is, then start looking beyond it "away" from where you think the light is. Most lighting comes from above, so the middle of the door is a good place to start. If the door has a particularly sharp angle to it, try the fender, the edges of the wheel wells, etc.

Edited April 7, 2017 by jason_stanfield

[jason_stanfield]

I always go with the darkest part of the car where there is the purist color, no reflection, no glare, an area of the car where there is a large group of either the same or very closely colored pixels.

 

You need to start from there as the goal is to make the car look like at the darkest point in game, that is the reason some colors cannot be picked if there is no decent point to pick from due to it being either too reflective or having too many sharp points of light on it.

 

For this car in particular i'd pick from the front around the edges of the V in the grille, this seems to be the best area as it's not being exposed to too much light and the reflection from the ground is not interfering, to some this may seem like a bad starting point as it looks far darker than the rest of the car but you must remember that GTA for some reason displays dark colors a lot brighter than you'd see it on a color picker.

 

Thanks for the advice.

 

When I get done grinding and back into colors, I'll apply your approach -- you do great work over in the requests forum, and I want to know your secrets!