Color palette

[gwnelson]

I'm in the middle of offering multiple color options on a bldg. I have created paint names in line with Benj Moore with colors as true to chips as I can get them. The difficulty is upon rendering & then printing the colors often come out too dark, so I go back & lighten up the values I've assigned. On and on...

But -- reopening a project and going back in to make color changes: the colors that I've assigned to the "Custom" palette have disappeared. Is this normal? And why do the color squares have to be so small anyway?

How about a color chart based on a universally (American) accepted set of values - Benj Moore. Ubiquitous to the point of being generic.

[Scott D Davis]

Are you making materials set to BM paints, or just making color selections for shaded mode?

[gwnelson]

No, it's for renders. And my problem with the output is that everything looks fine on the screen but gets way darker when I go to print, forcing me to eyeball some lightening of the color values.

And with the tiny little opportunity that we have to make custom colors, try holding up a BM color chip next to the color palette & make them match.

[anthony.67953]

We have an HP800 plotter and had to go into the printers advanced printer settings to get the outout to print lighter wit more vivid colors.

[Scott D Davis]

No, it's for renders. And my problem with the output is that everything looks fine on the screen but gets way darker when I go to print, forcing me to eyeball some lightening of the color values.

And with the tiny little opportunity that we have to make custom colors, try holding up a BM color chip next to the color palette & make them match.

You cna never trust screen color unless you've used a screen calibration tool. Photography sites have them.

Some paint websites have a color tool that tells you the RGB value for their paint colors. I looked on the BM website and they have a download for AutoCAD and Photoshop, but I didn't see much more.

My office used to have a poster sized print of 1000s of RGB values directly from our printer. You could then find a match from a paint chip, plu that value into Revit, and then know what the printed color would be regardless of the screen color.

[gwnelson]

Your poster is the way to go, Scott. But I'd have to beat an intern for weeks to get that done. Not only don't I have an intern, I don't have a stick.

[cliff collins]

The old human eye is always an option............


cheers

[gwnelson]

That's the basis of my complaint, Cliff. 1st, those tiny little squares on the custom color palette don't offer much to look at. 2nd, my DJ500 prints all colors several degrees darker, so I have to keep guessing, adjusting & printing. Eyeballs are working overtime.

[jeffh]

I remember having this delemia with the principal on my old office. He would come to my desk and look at the rendering on the screen and ask me to change the color this way or that way based on what he was seeing. Then it would get printed and look different and he would wonder what was going on. I never could really get through to him it does not look the same printed as it does on the screen. I just tried to keep him away from my computer monitor while I was working. :)

At least he agreed it was better than picking the best matched Prismacolor marker we had in the office that was not dried out. Yes, I have done hand rendering in my professional life. I was the best at it in our office and actually liked doing them. 8)

I don't care how slow Revit's renders were/are. It was WAYYY faster and better than the hand renderings I had to do. :shock:

[t1.shep]

You're opening a huge can of worms when it comes to color calibration and color theory. But Scott is correct, you're going to be guessing as to the outcome if you don't have a proper color calibrated monitor and printer profile. I've attempted to do this in my office and we bought a Colormunki hardware and software to try and bridge the gap between what we see on the screen and what comes out of our 3 different color printers. It's not easy. Combine this with the fact that Revit is not intended to be a color output software (in the vein of Photoshop or other graphic arts software which have much greater control over color and output) and you might find yourself in way over your head. We will typically output an image to Photoshop and do all our important color work with it.
That being said...greater control over the color swatches in Revit would be a big help, similar to Photoshop, the ability to add/open custom swatch palettes would be a great benefit. I haven't had the issue of my custom colors disappearing after closing a file, but you are limited to the 10 or so swatches which is bad.

[Scott D Davis]

Your poster is the way to go, Scott. But I'd have to beat an intern for weeks to get that done. Not only don't I have an intern, I don't have a stick.

Maybe one of these could help?

Google Image search for RGB Color Chart (http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=rgb+color+chart&gbv=2&aq=0&aqi=g4&aql=&oq=RGB+color+&gs_rfai=)

[t1.shep]

Maybe one of these could help?

Google Image search for RGB Color Chart (http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=rgb+color+chart&gbv=2&aq=0&aqi=g4&aql=&oq=RGB+color+&gs_rfai=)

Even with one of these, it's only accurate for the specific computer that printed the chart and there's no guarantee (and highly unlikely) that the chart will match the color on your screen for the given RGB values indicated on the chart. With the chart you'll need to basically print two charts... the original chart, and then a chart you make yourself that is your computer's interpretation of those color values. This way you can compare the difference between what the chart says the colors should be and what your computer outputs the different colors as. (and it will take an intern a day or so to recreate the chart) I tried to use the MultiRIP chart, but again, it is intended for Photoshop, and won't guarantee that if you enter the same RGB values in Revit you'll get the same color if you do it in Photoshop. Color Theory and industry standardization is highly complicated.

[sbrown]

This site is great for getting RGB values of paint colors
http://www.easyrgb.com/

[Alex Page]

We have an HP800 plotter and had to go into the printers advanced printer settings to get the outout to print lighter wit more vivid colors.

Similar for our Hp 1050c - advanced settings we turn down the darkness exactly 17 clicks!
Refer snapshot image attached

But also, if you have a ICC profile for your monitor AND your printer, you could give it a shot by loading in the profiles

[gwnelson]

We have DJ500 & I'll try the lightening function.

[cliff collins]

Yeah,

and remember, the lightning function worked for Ben Franklin...........

cheers

[gwnelson]

Well, that was a key event.

[Norton_cad]

Why not make your own colour book?

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=96282&page=2

[kreed]

We've actually found that exporting a tiff from Revit and printing from Photoshop with the proper print profile to be the closest match. We found on our ssytem that the Adobe RGB 1998 works pretty well. That and using our Canon 8100 that has 11 colors, or something like that, gets somewhat close.

That said, we still don't get colors to match exactly. There is always one range that's a little bit off. We've finally gotten the principals to agree that computer representations are just that and don't expect them to be perfect. We create a color map with the paint chips to have alongside the models that we show. Accepting that neither the paint chip or the model are going to be perfect representations of the finished product has made our lives a LOT easier.

It only took 6 years to convince people of that last point...

[cliff collins]

We've actually found that exporting a tiff from Revit and printing from Photoshop with the proper print profile to be the closest match. We found on our ssytem that the Adobe RGB 1998 works pretty well. That and using our Canon 8100 that has 11 colors, or something like that, gets somewhat close.

That said, we still don't get colors to match exactly. There is always one range that's a little bit off. We've finally gotten the principals to agree that computer representations are just that and don't expect them to be perfect. We create a color map with the paint chips to have alongside the models that we show. Accepting that neither the paint chip or the model are going to be perfect representations of the finished product has made our lives a LOT easier.

It only took 6 years to convince people of that last point...


Great point. We arrived at the same decision years ago. We are not in the print/advertising
level of color matching sophistication, and the final product is going to go through a whole lot of sample review, mockups in the field, etc. The renderings are contractually disclosed
as an "artists concept" and are not used for precise color/product approval.

cheers........