Reaper Power Palette

[Nameless]

Straight from the Reaper Mad Science Labs!

Our Power Palette is a fantastic new tool to help you improve your painting. It's a simple tool, really, but a huge deal for your painting.

You upload an image or supply a URL and start clicking inside the image. Our system will figure out the closest Master Series Paint colors for you.

Like a color? Save it to a list!

Want to see what colors went into that gem effect in a sword hilt? Want to see how you might put together a certain skin tone? Need to match the fur color of your dog? Just upload the pictures. The images get cleared off the server a few minutes after you stop clicking around.

Even better, the Power Palette is linked to the user-generated Inspiration Gallery. Now you don't have to guess at the colors that went into your favorite paint jobs. A couple clicks and you'll know.

http://www.reapermini.com/PowerPalette/

[Slawol]

Fantastic tool! Photoshop with paints Thanks!

[mahon]

Excellent tool! Matching paints may be so much easier now

[sea.man]

this might be very useful! thank you

[pae]

After checking a few of the figures I painted that are on their site, I have to wonder if they were using a correctly calibrated monitor when they determined the RGB values of their paints. Apparently, the hair on the pink haired gnome I did was done with some of the bone triad. I think the only color that was close to being correct was the Pale Indigo on the dwarf I painted for them a few years ago (It was, in fact, pale indigo). Others were sadly incorrect.

Don't get me wrong, I think the tool is a good idea. I just think it could use some work.

[mahon]

That is exactly the reason why I wondered how useful it can be. Not that I am full of doubt, but having taken really many photos and having explained that I can't be responsible for what people see on their screens I know that calibrations of monitors are a real nightmare of our times and are terribly varied.

So when the same color can look so different, how can the tool be useful?
I think that it MIGHT be much better if only it included at least some basic form of verification or basic calibration check.
Asking you to hold a bottle of paint next to the screen and comparing it to displayed examples to find the closest match. Based on several such tests, some kind of adjustment could be made. But then the tool becomes much more complex and I am afraid that's not something they'd care to do...

[sea.man]

I think the only problem are pictures shoot badly.

Basically, pictures are saved as maps of pixels. Each pixel is a combination of basic colours (so black in RGB would be (255,255,255)).
Paints are also made as combinations of RGB. That is why you can buy any paint colour you like i.e. for your walls
Here the program has to find the closest match between colours selected map on the picture and a paint recipe (probably stored in a database).

I have to wonder if they were using a correctly calibrated monitor when they determined the RGB values of their paints.

The monitor has nothing to do with it. It is just a program that works on zeros and ones saved on a hard disk

Asking you to hold a bottle of paint next to the screen and comparing it to displayed examples to find the closest match.

This program shows you, what among reaper paints are the closest match. If this program had a database of all producers paint recipes, it would be more accurate. Of course Reaper has no intention to show you that GW paint is the one you are looking for

Nothing can go wrong with a simple comparing red, green and blue between different colours.
The only problem is taking the pictures. Those taken badly - don`t show true colours.

[mahon]

OK, let me take it this way:
- I take a photo of my mini
- my computer's screen has never been calibrated and is: too dark, too saturated, too warm-colored
- so the colors I see on my photo are way different from what the miniature looks like in reality
- so I adjust the photo to get the colors right
- unfortunately due to computer screen't bad settings I need to make colors on the picture wrong to make them look right on my screen
- so what should be black is really grey (even though i see it as black), what should be saturated is really pastel (but i see high saturation) and what should be warm red is really cool magenta (but I see it looking right on the screen)
- so the RGB values are totally wrong now but I see the picture looking fine
- the application doesn't know how bad are my monitor's settings, so the colors I get from the power palette are also wrong
- instead of suggesting me black paint it shows grey, instead of saturated green I get pastel green, and instead of red i get cool magenta. of course these LOOK fine on my screen but if I buy paints of the names suggested, they will be wrong paints

got it now?

[sea.man]

what about the screens in cameras?
in most cases you can`t adjust them.

[mahon]

I can.

and I work on 3 computers with 2 LCDs and 1 CRT. believe me, making their displays work similar to each other is a real pain...