LEGO Color Names

bricksinbins

I often keep asking myself, why do sites like BL and BO not use the official LEGO color names? Would it not be much easier? In the case of BL I can understand that for colors that go way back maybe official names were not available for all colors available but on BO,?
I mean, take a color name like Medium Dark Flesh. Is there a Dark Dark Flesh and a Light Dark Flesh too? (rhetorical question). It doesn't seem to make much sense.

Does anybody know why it is like this? It seems it would be far easier and less confusing to just use the official color names.

Thanks,
Ken

robernat

AFOL sites uses colors that somehow match official names for certain colors (color palet wise).
TLG doesn't and their naming is limited to what they produce... But they also tend to change colors, which would make it complicated for sites like this, as the catalog needs to hold 60 years of colors ;-) Besides, it's not like TLG's naming is all saying... Euh Brick Yellow ??? I prefer Tan... And that is what most people would call it, based on what people learned 'colorwise' from their parents ;-)

JayB-SoCal

I would gather it helps keep separate site databases somewhat proprietary but the real source is probably just years of confusion and referencing that has to be consolidated somehow. Some goes for ID's of parts - there is the official Lego design ID and element ID. The database I've been gathering I really only want to reference those so I know which part for sure I'm talking about but if I use the API here or on Rebrickable or somewhere else I need to translate the ID's.

bricksinbins

Yeah, I'm not saying the official LEGO colors make more sense necessarily. Bright Blue is darker than Medium Blue for example, which doesn't really make sense to me. But neither does Medium Dark I was just thinking it would be less confusing if everybody used the same color names but I guess that's not always simple and straightforward either.
I have got so used to the BO color names though that I sometimes have to remind myself that LEGO probably has a different name for a particular color.

Hoddie

I once suggested that Admin could add another language pack to the site - English (Lego Colors) - where the only change from regular English would be that the names for colours would be changed to those used by the Lego group themselves. It would have been helpful for me on a few occasions but I understand there's no return on the time investment that would be required by BO.

TheSkirrid

Also bear in mind some sites [BL do this a lot] conflate multiple colours, and don't even list some. For translation of colours I'd suggest Ryan Howerter's Flikr, and his Brickset work also.

JayB-SoCal

The most amount of time I spent on gathering data for my own uses was on the color side - I now have 190 specifically tracked colors with alternate names used for matching. I spent a lot of time also making sure to annotate the RGB/hex of the color as well as CYMK and Pantone code discerned from the RGB/hex.

I'm holding the data for myself for now because if I have anything incorrect I don't want to muddy what's already out there - but honestly what's already out there is pretty inconsistent. I kept seeing a wide range of RGB/hex values and confused naming and sometimes sites with seemingly official info had some codes wrong - not the official LEGO codes for the colors. Typos can result in terrible long-term problems for others.

I think part of the problem is that some people who made "official" lists took colors from the 3D tools from LDraw or LDD - some of these lists reference that, others don't. The color names also have differences for the same reason. Also, LEGO themselves I believe in some cases (at least for the grays) used the same color name even when they adjusted hues slightly over the years from warmer hues to more neutral hues. When buying a batch of used bricks recently (locally, not via stores on BrickOwl), I saw at least 3 different tones for what was effectively the same intended gray - and not due to aging but the changes LEGO has done over the years.

The way I would personally deal with all of this is how I deal with any data project that at some point needs a public interface -- gather as much data as possible, from as many sources as possible, correlate, verify, weight the most accurate and then set up a normalization table so that regardless of what someone was looking for if their intent is understood then the best match can be made along with the most accurate code that would correspond with the source they want to used the code with. There should be very few mis-matches in that case. I have some web-based graphics code I've worked up last year that I might also use to do a visual display RGB match on colors - so that someone looking at a computer screen can see the actual color pretty accurately, not the pseudo-colors seen with renderings out of the 3D programs or the photos taken from various people who use unknown lighting conditions. I might make use of that at some point, but for now... just too busy so will tackle as I have time.

Pikachu3

JayB, I'd be happy to see your data, or at least share sources, maybe we'll each learn something. Here is my current master list: ryanhowerter.net/colors

I have Lego's official RGB, Pantone, and CMYK data from 2015 that I still need to add.

JayB-SoCal

You have way more info than I've charted & I barely have any historical references, notes or material type noted. The only thing I may be able to offer is a list of the Lego-centric color name with alternate color names that can be used for lookups which don't overlap on reversal. Mostly I did it so if I'm looking colors up and come across a name that isn't an official name I can try to reverse it to know what color is really being indicated.

BTW Iove your Lego photos, I'll be starting to take shots of my models as I make them and you'd think it would be easy but it's strange how a model in person looks really great but trying to get a good single angle without the presence of the piece getting jumbled up is pretty hard!

Since file sharing doesn't seem to be a feature here yet, I'll put up a slice of what I have that you may not have once my blog is up.