What's new
Photoshop Gurus Forum

Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Standard Color Definitions


Rich54

Guru
Messages
1,949
Likes
3,785
In a recent thread, the OP requested that his white shirt be changed to maroon. I looked up "maroon" in a few websites and there appears to be a consensus that it's defined as Hex Code 800000 and RGB (128,0,0). Sounds good to me, so that's what I used. But I'm wondering if there is a standard listing of color specifications that most graphics professionals agree on?

Here's a website that lists the definitions of dozens of named colors, but I don't know how authoritative this is.

 
In a recent thread, the OP requested that his white shirt be changed to maroon. I looked up "maroon" in a few websites and there appears to be a consensus that it's defined as Hex Code 800000 and RGB (128,0,0). Sounds good to me, so that's what I used. But I'm wondering if there is a standard listing of color specifications that most graphics professionals agree on?
I did the same as you and looked up the hex code for maroon - always came up as #800000. I just now went back to the Pantone system which was, and still is, the standard in the printing industry where I worked for my entire career. They offered no hex equivalent but referred back to Canva which only seems to add to the debate. Poking around, there seems to be a general definition of maroon as #800000 as a starting point. As in all things related to Photoshop, there isn't one way to get things done. Color seems to be highly subjective with only a general definition to start with when looking for a specific hex. Finally, it all comes down to what the "client" wants. "Yeah, I want something like that only darker/lighter, etc.":cheesygrin:
 
I tried to match closely to Hex code 800000. But after I had already posted, it occurred to me that the OP's photo was taken at night, so I probably should have darkened it a bit to compensate for that.

I used to dabble with Pantone colors a long time ago. Lately, I'm planning to repaint my apartment and I'm choosing wall colors. I discovered that some paint companies, like Benjamine Moore, have a website where you can enter your desired hex code and the website returns the closest match to a standard Benjamine Moore paint color.
 
I am providing an HTML file in a zip file that you can open up directly in your browser to see an interactive 3D plot of all 865 listed colors in the three wikipedia links.
It is viewed in Lab space.
You can rotate zoom etc for a better image (data points don't increase in size.
If you hover over a data point, it will give you the name and and also the RGB values appended to the name.
If you click on the data point, the color while show up in the lower left corner color chip.
I am not a web page designer, nor Javascipt expert, nor know much about anything of HTML.
I did find that all the data was on GitHub, Lab values could be had with computations in excel and then with some time with AI created the HTML and some embedded Javascript to create this 3D visualization. It took a while between me with little knowledge of what was needed to be done and a very error prone AI to get to this answer. Very repetitive with a lot of debugging via the AI.
All I can say is that the AI was way to cheery about the process because I was about ready to give up with the number of iterations (too many to count) to get this result o_O
Following is a screen shot of one hover and click on a data point as well as a link to the zip file.
I have only tried it on Chrome on my Mac yet it is "supposed" to work on all modern browsers.
Let me know if you have success with it
John Wheeler

Screenshot 2025-06-26 at 9.13.57 PM.jpg

Zip file link to the HTML file:

Zip file for the 3D color viewer HTML
 
HI @kabak for doing the video of the interactive 3D plot in action.
I was initially concerned about the Maroon RGB numbers as I had not seen them so searched the Excel database and found five Maroons in the master list with that one listed as UP Maroon:

Screenshot 2025-06-27 at 8.21.25 AM.jpg

Since some may want to have the database with RGB and Lab numbers available for searching, I am also including a zip file of the full Excel spreadsheet as well:

Zip file of entire Excel Color Database

Thought it was worth sharing
John Wheeler
 
Out of curiosity,
I looked up the color of the first one (Air Force Blue (Raf))
on Wikipedia and there were two different results.
The image is from the Wikipedia page

View attachment 151676
Here is what I found on a broad basis on the web.
Note that Pantone 549C I have seen posted as sRGB 107; 163; 185 as well as ~107,164,184
Screenshot 2025-06-28 at 8.09.19 PM.jpg

I would imagine any of the color numbers is a starting point where one could search for variations online.

As for reference, here are the two color chips for those two sRGB colors.

Screenshot 2025-06-28 at 8.28.39 PM.jpg

John Wheeler
 


Write your reply...

Back
Top