color question

[Michelle Wilson]

Is there any place where you can put the number to a color in so you can use that specific one for a design? example I need to use this color number I was given: #d6b7b5 but I cannot find a place to put it.

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, Michelle Wilson said:

I cannot find a place to put it.

RGB Hex colour picker

[BofG]

Anyone allergic to pedantry should stop reading here.

That is not a colour number, it's just three hexadecimal values concatenated. Each two digits are taken to represent a value from 0 to 255 inclusive, and are applied to the R, G, and B components respectively. The actual colour that results is determined by the colour profile that is used.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, BofG said:

Anyone allergic to pedantry should stop reading here.

And here is me feeling all proud that I winkled out the meaning of the question. [wry yet smug smiley face emoticon]

[NotMyFault]

All true what said before. Those hex color numbers are used only with RGB / sRGB color profile.

No sane person would use them (without explicit mentioning) in other color formats.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, BofG said:

That is not a colour number, it's just three hexadecimal values concatenated.

So what is a "color number"?

[Michelle Wilson]

My friend had business cards made. I am making a tumbler for her and she wants to use the font color from her card. So she gave me the number of the color that her person used. I’m new to design so I don’t know how else to reference it. 

[Ron P.]

What you were provide is more commonly called a Hex Code, which apparently is different than a color number. Old Bruce provided a location in Affinity apps where that Hex Code can be entered.

The others were just being technical when stating the Hex code is not a color number.

[Ron P.]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

So what is a "color number"?

I too am curious to what is a color number. I mean I don't want to fall into NotMyFault's category of being insane..

[carl123]

1 hour ago, Michelle Wilson said:

I’m new to design so I don’t know how else to reference it. 

Hexadecimal Colour Code

or for the cool kids...

Hex Colour Code

Use either one and people will instantly know what you are referring to

 

Typically shortened to Hex Code or Hex Colour for experienced users or those that work in the industry

[BofG]

5 hours ago, R C-R said:

So what is a "color number"?

Any of the CIE formats (e.g. L*a*b*, XYZ), those are device independent and instead relate to a human standard observer. Use those values and you are describing an actual colour.

[BofG]

7 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

No sane person would use them (without explicit mentioning) in other color formats.

Well..

4 hours ago, Michelle Wilson said:

My friend had business cards made.

Those weren't printed with RGB inks

[Michelle Wilson]

Thanks Ron. I didn’t know what to call it, but obviously someone knew what I was talking about because they told me where to look and I was able to do what I needed to do! 🤷🏻‍♀️I appreciate all the feedback! 

[BofG]

Just a heads up for you - colour matching across different printers / media is a hard task, presumably you are using sublimation to get it onto the tumbler which adds another hurdle. It's unlikely that colour will match what is on their cards, might be a good idea to set their expectation that it will be a close and similar colour.

Now that I've said all that it will probably come out 100% the same

[Michelle Wilson]

Thank you for the information!

[thomaso]

15 hours ago, BofG said:

Anyone allergic to pedantry should stop reading here.

That is not a colour number, it's just three hexadecimal values concatenated.

6 hours ago, BofG said:

Any of the CIE formats (e.g. L*a*b*, XYZ), those are device independent and instead relate to a human standard observer.

6 hours ago, BofG said:

Those weren't printed with RGB inks

6 hours ago, BofG said:

Now that I've said all that it will probably come out 100% the same

All this appears quite irritating and rather misleading than being useful for this topic. (to me it is not "pedantry" but confusion.)

@BofG, at least when writing "a human standard observer" I would expect you to wonder yourself about the theoretical approach of any objective, real, true, unambiguous judgement of a certain colour by a human. Not only it is the human only which develops, requires and fails in color reception and thus in definition, it is also a well known and often communicated issue where this chess board example is just one of many existing visualisations. – Compare the colour in the fields A and B … and then decide if LAB would make anything more clear than e.g. Hex Code to define the gray as numerical values.

 

Especially in DTP colour always depends on a complex system of various involved instruments, both hardware related (e.g. monitor, paper) and software related (e.g. calibration, profile), if print is involved it gets more complex simply because of the subtractive vs. additive property of colour. Thus colour is rather like language which requires a certain and known dictionary to be able to communicate specific information in an unambiguous way. Like words never have 1 unique meaning (e.g. "green", "tree", "hope") also colours depend on influences on the senders AND the receivers part (= screen / paper > eye). If more than 1 language is involved it gets even more complicated and may even appear impossible to achieve a "perfect" (true, correct, exact) translation. – Colour always requires a translation between at least two systems (~ "languages").

So it is no wonder and also an indicator for the ambiguity of colour that humans need so many differing systems and units. Colour can be described (> defined) as angle (degree), distance (wavelenghts, nanometer), temperatur (Kelvin), … electricity, reflectance, etc. (maybe volume or weight, too?)… and finally there is no 1 "true" system, measurement or unit but many.

Back to your mentioned "independency" as an advantage of LAB for the OP in this topic: It wouldn't solve the problem of required conversion from screen to paper, respectively the use of a certain profile. Below the LAB values are maintained if the document's space changes from RGB to CMYK ot graycale – but the colours …?

[BofG]

45 minutes ago, thomaso said:

when writing "a human standard observer" I would expect you to wonder yourself about the theoretical approach of any objective, real, true, unambiguous judgement of a certain colour by a human.

The concept of the standard observer is the basis of the entire CIE system. I don't need to wonder about it, you can read up on how they achieved that concept (and yes, it is somewhat flawed as it was a limited sample of people).

46 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Back to your mentioned "independency" as an advantage of LAB for the OP

I didn't advocate that for the OP, that was a reply to another member. As a side note, L*a*b* values are incredibly useful when a profile is not known. For the OP the best thing would be to have the colour breakdown and the profile it relates to, but that would only help if they knew how to then handle that through their print and sublimation process.

49 minutes ago, thomaso said:

All this appears quite irritating

You didn't stop reading where it said to

[NotMyFault]

16 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

No sane person would use them (without explicit mentioning) in other color formats.

My statement might be irritating.

In the past 2 decades, the sRGB color model dominated the web (http browser, jpeg images, gif images, png images etc), and most color values were given in that context.

There was even the de-facto standard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors and Web-safe colors (inside that link)

There are numerous other color formats and profiles. Everyone is free to give a color code (normally just meaning the brightness value per channel). If no other context is given (explicitly mentioning color profile or whatever system is used to interpret the numeric values), it is quite common sense to assume sRGB.

Of course, in the print dominated world there is AdobeRGB, and CMYK colors. the issue with that is there is no common standard. You have numerous, so it is impossible to interpret color numbers without explicitly getting what CMYC color model is used.

 

The first answer to the OP question by bruce is all what the OP needs. The rest of this thread is actually deviating into academic irrelevance (for practical purposes).

[thomaso]

9 hours ago, Michelle Wilson said:

I didn’t know what to call it, but obviously someone knew what I was talking about because they told me where to look and I was able to do what I needed to do!

Hex-RGB translation is a quite common question or task, accordingly there a quite a few tools online for such a calculation, for instance…

https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/color/hex-to-rgb.html

 

32 minutes ago, BofG said:

You didn't stop reading where it said to

When "pedantry" was announced I expected more detailed, more precise information on the specific, initial problem of this thread. But your LAB excursion is simply any detail without any practical or theoretical benefit to the OP's question – not the promised pedantry. 🤓

[BofG]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Hex-RGB translation is a quite common question or task, accordingly there a quite a few tools online for such a calculation, for instance…

Those tools do nothing but perpeptuate the lack of knowledge around this topic. Even the way you worded "Hex-RGB translation" shows this - the hex code in that context is already RGB. It's nothing more than three digits, but they are base 16.

Anyway, my whole point is that people think e.g. #99347C is a particular colour. It is not, it is values for the three channels. The colour produced is down to the profile used.

Clearly I'm pushing water uphill here so I'll give up at this point.

[NotMyFault]

https://hexwords.netlify.app/
another example how hex codes are used for RGB colors (and more 🤓)

[thomaso]

On 6/6/2022 at 6:10 PM, BofG said:

Anyway, my whole point is that people think e.g. #99347C is a particular colour. It is not, it is values for the three channels. The colour produced is down to the profile used.

Well, which colour definition / appearance is NOT "down to the profile used"?
– The more misleading, useless part came later in your idea of "pedantry" by stating LAB color definition as "independent" …

On 6/6/2022 at 7:07 AM, BofG said:

On 6/6/2022 at 1:12 AM, R C-R said:

So what is a "color number"?

Any of the CIE formats (e.g. L*a*b*, XYZ), those are device independent and instead relate to a human standard observer. Use those values and you are describing an actual colour.

… and thus ignoring that also a colour set in Affinity as LAB can change its look with a profile switch and thus for this "color question" topic LAB is neither more nor less independent than hex.

[BofG]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

Well, which colour definition / appearance is NOT "down to the profile used"?

CIE L*a*b* and CIE XYZ. They are used in spectrophotometers and in the profile connection space precisely because they are profile independant.

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

and thus ignoring that also a colour set in Affinity as LAB can change its look with a profile switch and thus for this "color question" topic LAB is neither more nor less independent than hex.

You are looking at an input, that is just setting a target colour - the profile then does what it can to get to it. Affinity uses the profile on the display side too, so you see that variation there - kind of "this is how close the profile can get to this target". The colour seems to be actually set in the document in a different format. As a side note, it's not made clear what that "LAB" actually is, as there are two formats that use the name, the CIE one is correctly referred to as "L*a*b*".

[thomaso]

14 minutes ago, BofG said:

used in spectrophotometers and in the profile connection space precisely because they are profile independant.

There is no "objective" colour. Also spectrophotometers need calibration to work valid and reliable – and thus depend on profiles. Even a certain light colour (e.g. 6500 Kelvin) is based on a profile in a process of judging / measuring / defining colour.
Compare page 48 – 55: https://www.heidelberg.com/global/media/en/global_media/products___prinect/products___prinect_topics/pdf_1/color_quality.pdf

However, all your ideas in this thread about LAB, L*a*b* or CIE aren't "pedantry" but just an excursion to a quite different topic. Or, as @NotMyFault pointed out before, entirely irrelevant and of no practical use in this thread. It even appears you already have been well aware of this when you mentioned:

On 6/6/2022 at 7:09 AM, BofG said:

Those weren't printed with RGB inks

… just without mentioning: "Those weren't printed with LAB inks, too. " 

… More of this type of "pedantry" alias "water up the hill": Colour does not exist – it is only electromagnetic radio wave. Can't you hear it?
… Final outing: What LAB values would represent this "new black in the block"?  https://news.mit.edu/2019/blackest-black-material-cnt-0913

[Old Bruce]

56 minutes ago, thomaso said:

is only electromagnetic radio wave. Can't you hear it?

Only on my Colour Radio, the black and white one is monophonic.