Color Matching Tool

[Anonymous]

You might have seen this around once or twice before, but I just wanted to get it out to as many people as possible.  It is a free online tool that works sort of like those paint matching machines they use at the home stores and what not.  Right now it has around 35 lines of paint and 4000 some odd paints in the system.  They range form model paints to craft and spray paints - and a lot of stuff in between.

The first tool of the suite allows you to look up one color at a time.  You can either enter in an RGB number (using hexidecimal format) or select a paint from a line and look up matches in other paint lines.  This comes in useful if you are reading an article and it calls out a paint that is no longer available or isn't available in your area (or is only available in an enamel and you prefer to use water based paints). 

Color Match 1.0

A quick run down on how to use it:

Select the type of search you want to do - RGB or Paint matching.

For RGB Searches, simply enter in your RGB info and click the Submit button.  Your results should display on the right.

For Paint Searches, select a paint line and click submit in order to load the color swatches (for those who might be interested - I am working on an Ajax version which automatically refreshes).  When the swatches apear find the swatch you want to match other paints to and go ahead and click the radio button below it.  Click submit again in order to get the results.

You can further refine your search using the options on the bottom.  All the lists in this section are Multi-Select lists, hold down the Ctrl key and you can add as many as you want from each list to fine tune your search.

• Color range is the color space distance that will be used to determine if a paint is a match.  Smaller numbers are will provide the best matches - but fewer of them.  Large numbers will provide more matches, some of which might not be too close.  The matches themselves are returned in order of best to worst, so you don't have to worry about possibly missing a better match that doesn't get displayed.
• Paint type sets the kind of paint that will come back.  If you want an inexpensive paint for doing larger areas, take a look at craft paints.  If you want to cover area quickly, take a look at the aerosols.  Everything should be fairly well self explanatory.
• Paint Finish will set the actual finish of the paint.  This is probably one of the most subjective sections of the search.  If a manufacturer calls the paint flat, or it is obviously of one specific finish (metallics for example) - that is what I load for it.  Other ones I have kind of been comparing to similiar paints to see how the finishes compare.
• Lines to Search will allow you to filter out paint lines that you don't want to see.  If your local store only carries two or three of the paint lines, you can select those and only those will be used to make the matches.  If you really prefer a specific brand, you can select that.

Full Line Tool

The Full Line tool lets you compare two complete paint lines at once.  Maybe you used to use a specific brand of enamels, but now for health/kids or whatever you want to switch over to a water based paint.  You can use this tool to generate a shopping list or conversion chart from one line to the next.  Not many options on it - just select two paint lines and click the button. 

Color Shades

The Color Shades tool is the newest of tools which I have made live.  It still is getting tweaked, but other users have requested a tool which does what this does.  Basically you enter in colors and what not like you do for the Color Match tool - but instead of finding a matching paint, it will provide several different shades of that color in order to deal with highlights and shadows.

This ends up getting used more by the users who paint figurines and miniatures as opposed to those who paint models. 

Color Match FAQ

Pretty well self explanatory.  It covers a few of the more common questions I have gotten regarding this tool, and how it works.

Thats about it.  I hope you guys find it useful - if you have any questions let me know.

 

Joe Kutz 

[jeffers_mz]

That looks like a pretty handy set of tools.

Here, we picked real world terrain photos we wanted to color match on the layout, mixed some paint and brushed it on the layout, then photographed the test area on the layout under the finished lighting system, and used Photoshop to compare the RGB contents of the prototype and model images, but that didn't give us much to go on as to how much of each color to add to get the shade we wanted, nor did it give the variations for highlight and shadows.

Looks like you put some time into this, and it should prove useful for a lot of people.

Thanks!