Internet on-site color identification strip suggestion

[Cave Keeper]

The problem with color identification for websurfers is that they don''t know whether the colors shown are actually the colors they imagine.

Perhaps it might be useful if some kind of color standard could be adopted, where people might agree red means exactly a certain wavelength for light, etc. The next thing is to provide a strip consisting of a "rainbow" of all relevant colors on each gemstone website.

A websurfer should then be able to match that standardised specimen "rainbow" strip against his own idea of what colors should look like. In addition, he can print out a particular "rainbow" strip and the various images of gemstones provided from a website. This way, he has a chance to compare a printout with the images on his computer screen to get a better idea of the differences in color so as to enable him to make an allowance for those differences.

I believe such a color assurance scheme should improve buyers'' confidence in doing transactions on the Internet; therefore, it is in the economic interest of on-line gemstone dealers to work out such a scheme. Perhaps a gemologist could initiate this scheme?

 

[strmrdr]

This has been discussed and it wouldnt work.
Every monitor and every printer even the same brand and settings will show colors slightly differently.
This drives website designers nuts at times.
Untill someone comes up with a simple color calibration solution it will not work.
Graphic houses spend hours matching their scanners, monitors and printers the software to do it right is in the $1500-$2000 range per copy with a site licence going in the $30000 range.

Even with the best hardware and the right software the results are not 100% some shades will still be off the best you can do is match the primary colors and the white and black levels anything in between is going to be off no matter what you do.

 

[valeria101]

Actually, the hardware is just the beginning of the trouble - the cut makes a serious difference on the apparent color shade and this is why a master set of stones is always preferred (and used) to any sort of color scheme with 2D representation. If you take into account trichroism, fluorescence, color change, asterism... or any other such additional phenomena determining color and price, than it becomes quite obvious that a color strip would not do unversed buyers much good.

Some shops (think makeup and leather goods, not gems) would issue color strips for buyers - but gems are not so much a commodity yet, for what that matters.

It still amazes me how diligently were all the time honored pricing idiosyncrasies incorporated in the seemingly clear and rational diamond grading system

Really admirable work, as far as I understand.

Btw, GIA uses the Munsell color system - but the reference just did not gain much terrain. It cannot unless some additional system relates color to price - as it happens for diamonds, I would think. You may get as far as talking about hue, tone and saturation when ordering some colored gem - but this is supposed to remain just a tentative beginning on the road to pricing.


Just a thought, of course. Comments welcome

And just to mention the refference set idea... I think there is one in preparation for judging diamond cut and brilliance. It makes sense to give people something they are used to (as compared to the refference set for grading color, I suppose) rather than the theoretical "best"

whatever that might be.

 

[Cave Keeper]

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On 7/7/2004 1:05:00 AM valeria101 wrote:

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a master set of stones is always preferred (and used) to any sort of color scheme with 2D representation.
:
Btw, GIA uses the Munsell color system
:
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The merchants could show their equivalent colors on the website - making sure their goods show the colors they should show when their images are reproduced are consistent with their master set of stones or the Munsell color system for example; surfers should then be able to see how those color systems look on their screens compared with their own physical sets of those colors.