Right now, there are several inconsistencies with which colors are valid for which tags and I believe there should be a universal list of valid colors that apply to all colored tags (*_hair, *_eyes, etc.).

From what I've see, the following colors are universal¹:

• black
• blue
• brown
• green
• grey
• orange
• red
• pink
• purple
• rainbow (not one color but is treated like one)
• tan
• white

The following colors are not¹:

• amber (light orange, only applies to eyes)
• beige (sometimes aliased to tan)
• blonde (hair only, aliased to yellow elsewhere)
• cream (sometimes aliased to tan)
• cyan (sometimes aliased to blue)
• teal (sometimes aliased to green)
• yellow (everything except hair)

¹ I may have missed a few. I left out really obscure colors like olive (dark yellow) and maroon (dark red).

The big problem with these inconsistencies and the aliases enforcing them is that you can have images where several things are the same color yet you can't tag those same colored things as the same color because some automatically change to something else. It also affects one's ability to find images containing that colored thing.

Examples:

post #190748 <- yellow hair and fur, but can't tag yellow_hair.

post #862133 <- teal hair, fur, eyes and skin, but can't tag teal_fur.

post #1099942 <- tan and beige fur, but can't tag beige_fur.

Well, we used to have a list of valid colors in tag_group:colors, but looks like someone's made a mess of it by removing the list and adding colors that aren't valid. Listing them is probably the main reason why the invalid ones are getting tagged again. Sigh.

For starters, feel free to wipe cream_*. It wasn't one of the colors we agreed to keep, and some variations have been aliased away. The remaining ones shouldn't be too hard to handle manually, it's not tagged much.

Beige is an another one that gets tagged all over the place, and not worth keeping because of that. But that one probably needs aliases and further discussion, better not touch it for now.

The argument for keeping amber_eyes was that it's an actual eye color. I'm not sure if that a good argument anymore, because another eye color (hazel) got aliased away.

My argument against amber_eyes is that it's basically lighter orange and we don't need two tags for orange. Sort each instance into either orange or yellow, whichever it's closer to.

Beige is mainly used for light skin tone, though fur is often that color as well. I'd say alias cream_* to beige_* due to similarity, unalias beige_fur from tan_fur so they can be tagged/searched separately.

You could put olive on the list but it hardly ever appears in artwork. No surprise, though, it's not a nice color.

post #671860

BlueDingo said:
Beige is mainly used for light skin tone, though fur is often that color as well. I'd say alias cream_* to beige_* due to similarity, unalias beige_fur from tan_fur so they can be tagged/searched separately.

The color ranges for beige and tan overlap, which makes those impossible to tag consistently as different colors. We should keep one and alias the other away.

There just hasn't been any consensus for which one to keep. As you can see from the existing aliases. Honestly though, considering how messy those are and how hard it is to clean them, I'd be for invalidating both and just tagging them as yellow, white, or brown, whichever is closer.

The problem is things generally tagged as one is too light/dark to be called the other, and also too light/dark to be called other colors.

BlueDingo said:
The problem is things generally tagged as one is too light/dark to be called the other, and also too light/dark to be called other colors.

Which is why it'd be best to stick to main and secondary colors. Colors are rarely used in searches in the first place, so it's really not worth the headache to try to keep the tertiaries sorted.

Tan and beige are in the yellow and brown color ranges, and could be tagged as such.

If I had to pick one, I'd say go with beige. Chances are people are tagging tan things as brown anyway.

Primary colors:

• blue (I)
• yellow (II)
• red (III)

Secondary colors:

• green (I + II)
• orange (II + III)
• purple (III + I)

Tertiary colors:

• indigo (I + _III)
• teal (I + _II)
• chartreuse (II + _I)
• amber (II + _III)
• vermilion (III + _II)
• magenta (III + _I)

Brightness (basic):

• white (maximum)
• light gray
• gray
• dark gray
• black (minimum)

[/section]

Exist variations of colors in according to the lightness:

light (e.g. light blue)
Basic (e.g. blue)
Dark (e.g. dark blue)

We also have some special cases in term of nomenclature (based in lightness and intensity), and orange is the most notorious one:

Observations:

• "Cream" is used for extremely clear yellow, ambar and orange.
• "Olive" is used for dark chartreuse and yellow
• Synonyms:
• teal = cyan
• magenta = pink
• blue = cerulean
• purple = violet

Atention: All that is simplified, color perception and nomenclature may vary.

O16 said:
All that is simplified, color perception and nomenclature may vary.

Made worse by varying monitor settings. What looks like yellow to someone might look like white to someone else.

Which makes me wonder if we should just tag the base color, and add modifiers like dark_fur when applicable.

Genjar said:
What looks like yellow to someone might look like white to someone else.

Cream may looks like white to someone, but yellow?

O16 said:

Primary colors:

• blue (I)
• yellow (II)
• red (III)

Secondary colors:

• green (I + II)
• orange (II + III)
• purple (III + I)

Tertiary colors:

• indigo (I + _III)
• teal (I + _II)
• chartreuse (II + _I)
• amber (II + _III)
• vermilion (III + _II)
• magenta (III + _I)

That's ink colors. Here's light colors.

Primary colors:

• red (I) (hue 0)
• green (II) (hue 80)
• blue (III) (hue 160)

Secondary colors:

• yellow (I + II) (hue 40)
• cyan (II + III) (hue 120)
• magenta (III + I) (hue 200)

Tertiary colors:

• orange (I + _II) (hue 20)
• chartreuse (II + _I) (hue 60)
• ? (II + _III) (hue 100)
• cerulean (III + _II) (hue 140)
• purple (III + _I) (hue 180)
• pink (I + _III) (hue 220)

@O16
I can kind of see why you are using painter's color wheel instead of additive color wheel.
However since RGB color picking is extremely accessible and RYB is not, I think we could try harder to use RGB. Edit: Ninjaed by BlueDingo.

I think it would be less ambiguous to use 'washed out' or 'desaturated' rather than 'clear' (this seems to be what you mean by clear, it's the exact opposite of what I would expect.)

EDIT2: Perhaps we could use something like this as a 'basis' (saying that any difference more subtle than this should not get a separate color name). It's a 3x3x3 RGB colorcube, so it's basically as coarse as you can divide up RGB while still hitting all major hues.

savageorange said:
@O16
I can kind of see why you are using painter's color wheel instead of additive color wheel.
However since RGB color picking is extremely accessible and RYB is not, I think we could try harder to use RGB. Edit: Ninjaed by BlueDingo.

I know the model that I choose do not really matchs with the light behavior, but it have something interesting: is easy to understand and easy to apply in tagging context.
Example: I saw a fur color that resembles orange, but also resembles yellow, so I tag it amber, which (as the model clearly shows) is the intermediary color; simple and quick.

And, being little accessible isn't a problem, since we can create links, like your, in wikis.

savageorange said:
I think it would be less ambiguous to use 'washed out' or 'desaturated' rather than 'clear' (this seems to be what you mean by clear, it's the exact opposite of what I would expect.)

Better now?

But do we need a color between yellow and orange? Those two colors are very close already. Your model also contains vermilion (between orange and red) and indigo (very close to purple) but doesn't contain pink.

BlueDingo said:
But do we need a color between yellow and orange? Those two colors are very close already. Your model also contains vermilion (between orange and red) and indigo (very close to purple) but doesn't contain pink.

I) I think we need, in the same way we need "teal_fur".
II) Indigo is not that close to purple (at least I can easily see the difference).
III) Yes, it contains (see "synonyms").

Let's not get sidetracked. New color tags are not going to be added. The current ones are enough of the headache, and we've been looking for a way to prune those.

We have already tried using intermediary colors, and it didn't work out. For the aforementioned reasons: users can't tag those consistently, and cleaning them is not worth the time spent.

O16 said:

Primary colors:

• blue (I)
• yellow (II)
• red (III)

Secondary colors:

• green (I + II)
• orange (II + III)
• purple (III + I)

Tertiary colors:

• indigo (I + _III)
• teal (I + _II)
• chartreuse (II + _I)
• amber (II + _III)
• vermilion (III + _II)
• magenta (III + _I)

Brightness (basic):

• white (maximum)
• clear gray
• gray
• dark gray
• black (minimum)

[/section]

Exist variations of colors in according to the lightness:

light (e.g. light blue)
Basic (e.g. blue)
Dark (e.g. dark blue)

We also have some special cases in term of nomenclature (based in lightness and intensity), and orange is the most notorious one:

----------	normal intensity	low intensity
light	beige	beige
basic	orange	tan
dark	brown	brown

Observations:

• "Cream" is used for extremely clear yellow, ambar and orange.
• "Olive" is used for dark chartreuse and yellow
• Synonyms:
• teal = cyan
• magenta = pink
• blue = cerulean
• purple = violet

Atention: All that is simplified, color perception and nomenclature may vary.

Oy, reminds me of the color wheel

Fine, we'll play it your way.

Spectral Color Wheel (yours)

RGB Color Wheel (mine)

How should we handle lighter/darker colors? One of each for all 12 colors on that wheel means 36 different colors, 39 if you include black, grey and white.

I can't agree that magenta == pink. For print, it is (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magenta#Process_magenta_.28pigment_magenta.3B_printer.27s_magenta.29_.281890s.29 ); for screen, it isn't ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magenta#Web_colors_magenta_and_fuchsia ). That seems to be because print cannot represent magenta (fuchsia) as accurately as screen can.

Screen (ie digital art) is unquestionably the majority of art uploaded to e621.

Screen magenta I would consider definitely as a (bright) purple (meaning (blue == red) > green or blue>red>green, with pink being red>blue>green).

[on the previous topic, 'light blue' is more easy to understand than clear imo, so +1 on that.
And for completeness:

is easy to understand and easy to apply in tagging context.
Example: I saw a fur color that resembles orange, but also resembles yellow, so I tag it amber, which (as the model clearly shows) is the intermediary color; simple and quick.

(correct) RGB mixing also has this property, so...
]

Genjar said:
Let's not get sidetracked. New color tags are not going to be added. The current ones are enough of the headache, and we've been looking for a way to prune those.

We have already tried using intermediary colors, and it didn't work out. For the aforementioned reasons: users can't tag those consistently, and cleaning them is not worth the time spent.

So, no tertiary colors (except pink). But what should we do about "amber_eyes", "teal_hair" etc?

BlueDingo said:
How should we handle lighter/darker colors? One of each for all 12 colors on that wheel means 36 different colors, 39 if you include black, grey and white.

Should exists a way to solve this, like Genjar suggested, however I'm somewhat unsure if dark_* and light_* really would work.

O16 said:
Should exists a way to solve this, like Genjar suggested, however I'm somewhat unsure if dark_* and light_* really would work.

It wouldn't work for all of them. Dark orange is brown, light orange is beige.

O16 said:
So, no tertiary colors (except pink). But what should we do about "amber_eyes", "teal_hair" etc?

We should keep teal. It's a good middle color between green and blue.

EDIT: Just did a test on the spectral color wheel to see what the hue values of each color were:

• Red 238
• Vermillion 10
• Orange 18
• Amber 25
• Yellow 37
• Chartreuse 65
• Green 96
• Teal 99 (A hue of 119 looks more like teal)
• Blue 141
• Indigo 180
• Purple 194
• Pink 210

First off the usefulness of tagging colors is in finding characters that youe now color and species of, fairly recognizable traits but have forgotten the characters name or people have not taken the time to add the characters name as tags.

As to the colors, i did edit most of the tags pertaining to body coverage like feathers and scales a couple months ago.

colors like amber, beige, cream, gold as well as teal i had removed in a number of cases because they are not standardized under any official system, their mixture changes depending on what company or website site you go to reference from, they are subject to interpretation, cream, tan and beige in particular are problematic and so were all grouped under tan as the most known and understandable term that tends to also cover the other 2 for most people here and irl. Cyan was kept or i added because its unchangeable standardized under the CMYK system and one of the primary colors on all internet browsers and popular programs like Autocad as a primary preset, one can easily reference it. Teal will get you different results depending on where you go.

Note colors that share their name with something that exists irl like a objects, material or emotion(basicly descriptive) should be avoided were possible, as companies and websites will always have differing mixtures regarding colors that may be called rose or chartreuse for example, orange would be the exception to the rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Abstract_and_descriptive_color_words

To be clear if we are going go all out then all tertuaries should be excluded
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Color_star-en_%28tertiary_names%29.svg

primary and secondary should be the only ones kept plus brown,black and white.

Ruku said:
primary and secondary should be the only ones kept plus brown,black and white.

What about pink and grey? And what would you tag caucasian skin tone if beige is removed?

I suggest keeping two tertiary colors: Pink and Teal. The others are close enough to other colors to just tag them as the other colors.

Related question: How light/dark does a color need to go before we simply tag it as white/black? A lot of black things aren't actually drawn black (usually very dark blue or grey).

Greyish colors are an issue as well. How close to grey does a color need to be before we simple call it grey?

Pink and grey are tagged consistently, can be kept.

And tan is tagged more consistently than beige, so it'd probably be better to keep it and alias beige away. Beige seems to be one of the colors that everyone recognizes as a color, but hardly anyone knows exactly what color range it covers.

Genjar said:
Pink and grey are tagged consistently, can be kept.

And tan is tagged more consistently than beige, so it'd probably be better to keep it and alias beige away. Beige seems to be one of the colors that everyone recognizes as a color, but hardly anyone knows exactly what color range it covers.

There is a reason for that. cream_fur and beige_fur are both aliased to tan_fur.

Gold probably shouldn't be used as a color either.
Everything under gold_skin can be easily moved to yellow and orange, with shiny and metallic_body modifiers where necessary.

BlueDingo said:
There is a reason for that. cream_fur and beige_fur are both aliased to tan_fur.

I'm still not sure if that's a good idea. Beige is mistagged for a large variety of colors. Then again, it'd take a lot of work to disambiguate it..

Genjar said:
Gold probably shouldn't be used as a color either.
Everything under gold_skin can be easily moved to yellow and orange, with shiny and metallic_body modifiers where necessary.

Same with silver, it's just shiny grey.

Genjar said:
I'm still not sure if that's a good idea. Beige is mistagged for a large variety of colors. Then again, it'd take a lot of work to disambiguate it..

Probably because people associate the color tan with skin tanning. The issue there is caucasian skin tone is usually too light to be called tan. Aliasing tan to beige would cover the lighter colors, retag to brown if the tone is dark enough.

So what are we at now?

• Red
• Green
• Blue
• Cyan
• Magenta
• Yellow

plus

• Pink
• Tan
• Black
• Grey
• White

combining with

• hair (BTW: BlueDingo's concern about blonde vs yellow specialcasing seems to have gone unaddressed so far)
• fur
• body
• skin
• eyes
• background
• nipples
• lips
• penis
• pussy
• anus
• nose
• feathers
• scales (ehhhh... is this needed when we have both *body and *skin?)

-> 154 total tags (168 if you also include brown)..

plus IMO overly specific stuff (is $COLOR_areola needed when we have $COLOR_nipples ? Yeah they're not -quite- the same thing, but.... Ditto for $COLOR_mane vs $COLOR_hair)

Greyish colors are an issue as well. How close to grey does a color need to be before we simple call it grey?

IMO we really need a diagram to illustrate this. Pink and Tan have similar issues; the colorspace needs to be divided up into mutually exclusive areas.

I would suggest this as a definition of gray. But to be quite clear, we would probably need to have three to four diagrams, one per coarse 'brightness level'. I used the interactive color selector at HSLuv.org as a base for this one, since it's more colorimetrically reliable than standard HSL selectors.

BlueDingo said:
What about pink and grey? And what would you tag caucasian skin tone if beige is removed?

pink would fall under red or purple, it tends to be ether one of those colors with white simply added as such just a tent(light red/purple), not a different hue. Grey for same reasons and sorry genjar but regarding grey, its actually not that consistent considering things that are black do tend to get tagged under grey often, including the issues blue notes.
It would be tagged as brown, Human skins is regards as being diferent tints and shades of brown, most people caucasian and hispanics and east asians whould call their skin white or tan, not beige. Have no record of beige used anywhere to classify the general Caucasian skin color.

I suggest keeping two tertiary colors: Pink and Teal. The others are close enough to other colors to just tag them as the other colors.

as i noted before Teal is not a standardized color, it just a name added as a brand, the actual color that is named teal could just be a primary green if a company so chooses.

savageorange said:
So what are we at now?

(colors)

combining with

(things)

-> 154 total tags (168 if you also include brown)..

Don't forget the special case: rainbow.

plus IMO overly specific stuff (is $COLOR_areola needed when we have $COLOR_nipples ? Yeah they're not -quite- the same thing, but.... Ditto for $COLOR_mane vs $COLOR_hair)

Is there ever a situation where a character's areolas are a different color to their nipples?

Usually, a character has either a mane or human-style hair (which is still technically a mane), and manes often cover the top of a character's head just like hair does anyway. You probably could get away with using the same tags for both.

Ruku said:
pink would fall under red or purple, it tends to be ether one of those colors with white simply added as such just a tent(light red/purple), not a different hue.

I wouldn't call light purple pink. Light red, yes, but not light purple. And what about darker pink?

post #1095253

That's not a shade of red or purple. On a HSV scale, pink usually sits between hue 230 (reddish) and hue 200 (magenta). >230 is red, <200 is purple.

BlueDingo said:
I wouldn't call light purple pink. Light red, yes, but not light purple. And what about darker pink?

post #1095253

That's not a shade of red or purple.

that would seem to be a tint(light) of highly saturated purple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple#Varieties_and_uses_of_purple
see first example on left(queen Elizabeth II), see feminist movement symbol at bottom of page

Ruku said:
pink would fall under red or purple, it tends to be ether one of those colors with white simply added as such just a tent(light red/purple), not a different hue.

Pink is neither red or purple, is an intermediary color between these. Also "light red" is salmon and "light purple" is lilac.

Since the current argument against tertiary colors (spectral color wheel) is they don't being tagged consistently, pink and teal (which seem to be the more consistent ones) should be kept¹

¹ Bluedingo already stated something similar.

savageorange said:
combining with

• hair (BTW: BlueDingo's concern about blonde vs yellow specialcasing seems to have gone unaddressed so far)
• fur
• body
• skin
• eyes
• background
• nipples
• lips
• penis
• pussy
• anus
• nose
• feathers
• scales (ehhhh... is this needed when we have both *body and *skin?)

You missed stripes, spots, markings, claws, horn, tail, tongue, balls, clothing, topwear and bottomwear.

savageorange said:
plus IMO overly specific stuff (is $COLOR_areola needed when we have $COLOR_nipples ? Yeah they're not -quite- the same thing, but.... Ditto for $COLOR_mane vs $COLOR_hair)

I guess we don't need color_areola, but abbout mane and hair is another story.

There's also <color>_countershading, which is basically identical to the older <color>_belly tag group. Compare white_countershading and white_belly.

Dunno who created the countershading tag group, but I wish they had discussed it on the forum first. :/

O16 said:
Pink is neither red or purple, is an intermediary color between these. Also "light red" is salmon and "light purple" is lilac.

Since the current argument against tertiary colors (spectral color wheel) is they don't being tagged consistently, pink and teal (which seem to be the more consistent ones) should be kept.

You would do well to double check what you just said.
It say it in the first 5 words on the page>>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink

Note that i also noted light purple in addition to light red because without a direct deeply scrutinized side by side comparison most people are not going tell the difference between pink, salmon and lilac, how many people are going take minutes out of their time to compare colors, differences has to be visible within seconds that why there should be no teirtuaries including no tints or shades.
Also again no color that shares its name that is descriptive should be used here, the salmon for one person is a different salmon for another person and there is no standard for what is to be called salmon.

O16 said:
You missed stripes, spots, markings, claws, horn, tail, tongue, balls, clothing, topwear and bottomwear.

I usually only tag colors to the following:

• hair (Discussion on the blonde vs yellow special case pending)
• fur
• feathers
• scales
• body
• skin
• eyes
• sclera
• background
• nose

When it comes to spots and stripes, I just tag the color1_fur color2_fur stripes without tagging color_stripes. Sometimes ambiguity can be an issue (is a zebra white with black stripes or black with white stripes?) and it cuts down on tag numbers a bit.

I tend to simply throw in <color>_markings tag for stripes and such.

Ruku said:
Note that i also noted light purple in addition to light red because without a direct deeply scrutinized side by side comparison most people are not going tell the difference between pink, salmon and lilac, how many people are going take minutes out of their time to compare colors, differences has to be visible within seconds that why there should be no teirtuaries including no tints or shades.

I can tell lilac from pink without a side-by-side comparison.

I think we should discuss the yellow_hair->blonde_hair special case. For every tag except hair, yellow is used instead of blonde and blonde_fur is aliased to yellow_fur. Shouldn't it be flipped around for consistency?

Compare blonde_* to yellow_*

Ruku said:
You would do well to double check what you just said.
It say it in the first 5 words on the page>>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink

Note that i also noted light purple in addition to light red because without a direct deeply scrutinized side by side comparison most people are not going tell the difference between pink, salmon and lilac, how many people are going take minutes out of their time to compare colors, differences has to be visible within seconds that why there should be no teirtuaries including no tints or shades.
Also again no color that shares its name that is descriptive should be used here, the salmon for one person is a different salmon for another person and there is no standard for what is to be called salmon.

I) wikipedia isn't 100% accurate (specially on subjects in with exists little consensus, like taxonomy or colors)
II) I am not suggesting use salmon or lilac, I am only saying that they aren't pink.
III) since pink is tagged consistently why are you suggesting discart it?
IV) extremely lighter and darker versions of any color are somewhat ambiguos.
V) also exists dark pink.

BlueDingo said:
I think we should discuss the yellow_hair->blonde_hair special case. For every tag except hair, yellow is used instead of blonde and blonde_fur is aliased to yellow_fur. Shouldn't it be flipped around for consistency?

I'm not sure why it was even aliased that way in the first place. Let's see...

Oh. The argument was that blonde covers more than just yellow hair. But since we've got rid of some tags such as golden_hair, it's pretty much identical now. Unless you count white hair as blonde.

The alias could be flipped, but that post count is quite intimidating. Would be problematic if it ends up timing out.

Genjar said:
Oh. The argument was that blonde covers more than just yellow hair. But since we've got rid of some tags such as golden_hair, it's pretty much identical now. Unless you count white hair as blonde.

I've seen many instances of orange hair being tagged blonde.

Genjar said:
The alias could be flipped, but that post count is quite intimidating. Would be problematic if it ends up timing out.

What happens if it times out?

BlueDingo said:
What happens if it times out?

Some portion of the tags get left under the old tag, and become unsearchable. From what I've seen, there's two ways to fix it: by manually editing the posts to refresh it (if you can find them somehow), or by undoing the alias and trying again.

I'm not sure how often that happens nowadays. There haven't been aliases on that scale for quite a while.

Genjar said:
Some portion of the tags get left under the old tag, and become unsearchable. From what I've seen, there's two ways to fix it: by manually editing the posts to refresh it (if you can find them somehow), or by undoing the alias and trying again.

I'm not sure how often that happens nowadays. There haven't been aliases on that scale for quite a while.

Is there any easy way to lower the number enough to prevent a timeout? Manual retagging is out of the question because that would take way too long.

^ If an admin gets involved, can't they actually run the necessary SQL to do the update (using LIMIT + multiple goes to avoid timeouts)? I think parasprite used to do that.

Genjar said:
I tend to simply throw in <color>_markings tag for stripes and such.

+1. If we can reduce foo_spots foo_stripes -> foo_markings to just foo_markings , that reduces total tag count by 26.

O16 said:
you missed stripes, spots, markings, claws, horn, tail, tongue, balls, clothing, topwear and bottomwear.

My opinion on the first three is above. Claws, horn(..s?),tongue, clothing, topwear and bottomwear, OK. Balls seems to have the same relation to penis as areola does to nipples (ie. they are almost always the same color), so IMO is similarly dubious (maybe a little better since balls can be visible without penis being visible)

Adding sclera, markings, claws, horn, tongue, tail,clothing, topwear and bottomwear, but not balls, areola, mane, stripes, or spots, gives a total of 299 tags. Including the latter tags gives a total of 364 tags. These numbers include the missing rainbow color that BD pointed out.

Edit: I think "two-tone" and "multicolored" also count as colors. "three-tone" exists but maybe we want to invalidate/alias it away.
That would increase the above figures to 345 and 420 respectively, which is getting .. fairly ridiculous.

Ruku said:
Also again no color that shares its name that is descriptive should be used here, the salmon for one person is a different salmon for another person and there is no standard for what is to be called salmon.

This is an extremely general problem and is why I have been pushing the idea of having a labeled color chart: we would be able to define just what e621 means by eg. teal_$FOO, divide up the problem into 'it's either this or that, which color is it closer to'.

What is our stand on the various color_clothing tags? I've seen tags like green_clothing, red_dress, white_socks, black_panties, etc. but don't know if they're supposed to be tagged or not. Some have wiki pages (red_dress) and some have implications (black_panties).

BlueDingo said:
What is our stand on the various color_clothing tags?

Kept for now. The current policy is to not remove established tags if they're not broken in some way.

But keep in mind that just because they exist, it doesn't mean that anyone needs to tag them. As a rule of thumb, don't bother tagging anything that you feel is worthless. There's always plenty of things to tag, so it's best to focus on tags that you find useful.

That's especially true for niche tags. The user who created it is the one who should get it fully tagged, nobody else is required or even expected to help with such projects.

I mainly want to know because I try to add as many valid tags as possible when tag numbers are low enough and this category contains a lot of haphazardly applied tags.

From searching red_*, I found: red_clothing, red_bottomwear, red_topwear, red_dress, red_shirt, red_legwear, red_underwear, red_scarf, red_armwear, red_handwear, red_headwear, red_hat, red_jacket, red_outerwear, red_tie, red_skirt, red_bowtie and others with <10 images. The number of tags should probably be cut down at some point.

Apparently, coloured teeth are also a thing.

O16 said:
I) wikipedia isn't 100% accurate (specially on subjects in with exists little consensus, like taxonomy or colors)
II) I am not suggesting use salmon or lilac, I am only saying that they aren't pink.
III) since pink is tagged consistently why are you suggesting discart it?
IV) extremely lighter and darker versions of any color are somewhat ambiguos.
V) also exists dark pink.

mind you but there is a consensus to the primary and secondary colors as i said before they fall under internationally recognized standards.
Also nothing is 100% accurate but wikipedia is the most accurate thing you will find on one the internet. something that is monitored by a single person will always be less accurate then something monitored by many. Regarding taxanomy there is consensus for the most part, whats actually true thou is that systems obviously sometimes need to be adjusted when new species are found, that does not really apply to here sence we are not finding new colors.

some mixtures of salmon are in fact a form of pink(as such a tinted red) while other mixtures that may also be called salmon have more of a orange form.

You kinda make a point for excluding pink thru your last 2 notes, pink is still just a tint of red for the most part, and tints can still be dark by ether adding black or blue, as such some forms of pink do tend to also look like purple. tertuaries should not be used and that includes tints and shades.

Regarding blond, it not a actual color in of it self but rather a grouping of any human natural hair color that is too light to be called red, black or brown but isnt solid white or monochromatic grey, with some overlap torwards red, which is probably why some are tagged with stuff you consider orange.

Ruku said:
Regarding blond, it not a actual color in of it self but rather a grouping of any human natural hair color that is too light to be called red, black or brown but isnt solid white or monochromatic grey, with some overlap torwards red, which is probably why some are tagged with stuff you consider orange.

You mean things that are orange.

post #1477 <- That is not blonde.

If blonde is meant to be a range of colors, shouldn't the yellow_hair->blonde_hair and blonde_fur->yellow_fur aliases be removed and each tagged properly?

I made set #5512 for yellow hair some time ago but a tag is far more practical.

BlueDingo said:
If blonde is meant to be a range of colors, shouldn't the yellow_hair->blonde_hair and blonde_fur->yellow_fur aliases be removed and each tagged properly?

Right, that's a good argument for flipping it. Since if blonde is supposed to be tagged for a broader range, then there's currently no tag for yellow_hair.

Genjar said:
Right, that's a good argument for flipping it. Since if blonde is supposed to be tagged for a broader range, then there's currently no tag for yellow_hair.

That's why I made the set. At least now, some of them can be found by searching set:yellow_hair. I should add some maintainers, but who should I add?

Oh shit. I just found chartreuse hair. post #3047

Good stuff!

• Added to tag_group:colors

-
BTW, @Ruku replied to the colo(u)r standardization forum draft I mentioned a while ago:

https://e621.net/forum/show/204414

Ruku said:
concerning your draft and a not so small problem of using a pure scientific(rainbow based) system is that it would exclude one of the most used recognizable colors in pretty much all art and nature it self, brown. And i do think it is worthwhile still having established secondaries like tan(common human skin) or cyan(major color system primary) among others thru il agree if others dont think secondaries/outlyers arnt worthwhile.

Which are some interesting points to consider, IMO.

-
Also, If anyone wants to continue/use the info from the draft, feel free

Ruku said:
mind you but there is a consensus to the primary and secondary colors as i said before they fall under internationally recognized standards.

Sorry, but no. In some places in east Asia blue and green are commonly swaped, in regarding to the ocidental standards.

Ruku said:
Also nothing is 100% accurate but wikipedia is the most accurate thing you will find on one the internet.
something that is monitored by a single person will always be less accurate then something monitored by many.

My personal experieriences tell me otherwise.

Ruku said:
Regarding taxanomy there is consensus for the most part, whats actually true thou is that systems obviously sometimes need to be adjusted when new species are found, that does not really apply to here sence we are not finding new colors.

... What? The whole protoctist kingdom is a box tagged with "leave here what you don't know where else fit" and no one agree on how to fix this; according genetical researches, birds are actually reptiles, but lots of people disagree; some people say that scorpions are arachnids, however some say they have their own class; the old discution about virus: they are live beings or not? Exist many different concepts of species, and each person uses the one which it likes the most.

Ruku said:
some mixtures of salmon are in fact a form of pink(as such a tinted red) while other mixtures that may also be called salmon have more of a orange form.

As I said, light and dark colors tend to be somewhat ambiguous.

Ruku said:
You kinda make a point for excluding pink thru your last 2 notes,

When exactly?

Ruku said:
pink is still just a tint of red for the most part, and tints can still be dark by ether adding black or blue, as such some forms of pink do tend to also look like purple. tertuaries should not be used and that includes tints and shades.

I) pink is close to both red and purple, but usually not enough to be problematic.
II) "adding blue"? BLUE!?

@titanmelon

Brown is "dark orange" and the orange color can be seen in rainbows.

O16 said:
As I said, light and dark colors tend to be somewhat ambiguous.

True... And like I said, that's partly because of miscalibrated monitors. Some folks set the saturation and contrast far too high (or low). Not to mention that English color names are kind of arbitrary, and the color ranges rarely coincide with what the colors are called in other languages. So tagging those is especially problematic for non-English users.

No wonder it's so hard to keep the color tags consistent.

As far as I can see, the main problems are the tan/beige and cyan/teal pairs. And the users who insist on tagging obscure colors such as lavender. (Obscure in the sense that most people know that it is a color, but only have a vague idea of where it is on the color spectrum.)

Genjar said:
As far as I can see, the main problems are the tan/beige and cyan/teal pairs. And the users who insist on tagging obscure colors such as lavender. (Obscure in the sense that most people know that it is a color, but only have a vague idea of where it is on the color spectrum.)

Lavender is supposed to be light purple but images containing it seem to vary between grey, purple and pink. It should be sorted into whichever is closest.

I have seen people using silver for light grey, then I start finding in on posts ranging from mid-grey to white.

Aqua is another one to watch out for. It's supposed to be teal but sometimes shows up on blue things.

Genjar said:

As far as I can see, the main problems are the tan/beige and cyan/teal pairs. And the users who insist on tagging obscure colors such as lavender. (Obscure in the sense that most people know that it is a color, but only have a vague idea of where it is on the color spectrum.)

Tan and beige are variants of orange, but the first one is a darker and usually less intense than the second one; however, I guess these two are close enough for being aliased. Teal and cyan are extremely close to each other (and often used as synonyms), so I also suggest alias these.

BlueDingo said:
You mean things that are orange.

post #1477 <- That is not blonde.

That would be what is called strawberry blonde

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/94/dc/97/94dc97bf9d2dbe9d259271f5e46d996b.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a0/9c/be/a09cbe6fbcdac6236f798f247486a2b2.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_hair_color#/media/File:Strawberry_Blond_Girl.jpg

given that color tends to be grouped as both blond and red hair

and your chartenues hair is tagged as blond hair, not green hair which is again the problem of blond existing as a tag heree where everything else is tagged by actual color>>

O16 said:
Sorry, but no. In some places in east Asia blue and green are commonly swaped, in regarding to the Occidental standards.

I presume you are actually talking about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language
im sorry but until we stop using the English language for tags on this site i dont see how this really applies. Also adding that from what i take from the subject the colors are recognized as 2 distinct colors in east asian countries but there exists no separate terms or have only recently been created.

My personal experieriences tell me otherwise.

well that we are going just have to agree to disagree on as my experiences difer from yours.

... What? The whole protoctist kingdom is a box tagged with "leave here what you don't know where else fit" and no one agree on how to fix this; according genetical researches, birds are actually reptiles, but lots of people disagree; some people say that scorpions are arachnids, however some say they have their own class; the old discution about virus: they are live beings or not? Exist many different concepts of species, and each person uses the one which it likes the most.

would like to discuss this but that would be totally off topic to what we are supposed to be discussing here.

As I said, light and dark colors tend to be somewhat ambiguous.

none the less you persist on wanting to keep them or have them added>>...

When exactly?

IV) extremely lighter and darker versions of any color are somewhat ambiguos.
V) also exists dark pink.

I) pink is close to both red and purple, but usually not enough to be problematic.
II) "adding blue"? BLUE!?

Pink is red, not just close to red>> not usually is still enough reason, there should be no unnecessary exceptions.

Have you worked with real paint?

Also Brown is its own color created from all 3 unevenly mixed primary colors, not orange. were as a even mix of all 3 results in white or black depending on if your working with additive or subtractive colors

Ruku said:
I presume you are actually talking about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language
im sorry but until we stop using the English language for tags on this site i dont see how this really applies.

Not actually. Certain colors that we consider hues of blue are considered hues of green in the mentioned locations. This isn't just a question of nomenclature.

Ruku said:
well that we are going just have to agree to disagree on as my experiences difer from yours.

OK.

Ruku said:
none the less you persist on wanting to keep them or have them added>>...

Except by pink and teal, I gave up the idea of tagging tertiary colors (spectral color wheel). Also I never suggested use colors like olive, lilac, salmon etc. I am sorry if I didn't made it clear.

Ruku said:
Have you worked with real paint?

Yes. I painted canvas as a hobby, but stopped some years ago.

Ruku said:
Also Brown is its own color created from all 3 unevenly mixed primary colors, not orange. were as a even mix of all 3 results in white or black depending on if your working with additive or subtractive colors

I) When you say "primary colors" which color wheel are you using?
II) Also, I mixed tints dozens of times before. I ever try to avoid saying something without a basis.

Not actually. Certain colors that we consider hues of blue are considered hues of green in the mentioned locations. This isn't just a question of nomenclature.

If this is true, then we just need to define what e621 means by blue and green (visually, not as ratios, because...:)

"its own color" / "tint" / mixing

How is 'how is X color mixed' relevant to taggers? Will the majority of them even CARE, let alone have a clue, about how color is mixed?

If anything, they only should need to have a little judgement about 'is this color visually more similar to color X or Y?'

Thought of an idea (that is possible good) to hopefully avoid edit-wars of color tags.

(Remember how your math and science teachers would say "show your work"? Well this is kinda like that)

As a test, I added:

to Description field of post #1619600 .

Possibly not good idea
because eyedropper-text probably doesn't count as a Description,
but if put eyedropper-text into "Edit reason" field may be less useful for future tag edits because have a feeling some contributors don't check tag history.

So... good idea? Bad idea?
Just put eyedropper-text into Edit reason field??

+ (feature?) suggestion: add variation of colorhexa.com to e621.net (possible URL e621.net/colorhex/E9546A )
with simplified descriptions (making it easier to figure out which e621 color-tag is appropriate)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors#Hex_triplet

(Went through about 27 pages of forum topics/threads and this thread seemed the main color thread)

I wouldn't add a description every single time you add a color tag. That would get obnoxious fast... But if there ever is confusion over a color (comments or tag war), this seems reasonable. As long as there aren't any optical illusions... https://www.illusionsindex.org/images/illusions/grey-strawberries/greystrawberriesaltered.png.jpg The eyedropper will tell you these are gray, but if we were to tag their color for some bizarre reason, it ought to be red.

ListerTheSquirrel said:
eyedropper

NoooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo..

While a grand idea conceptually, that's... not really...

Do you remember The Dress? Some people said white and gold, some people said blue and black, internet threads raged on.

The reason The Dress was so confusing was because our eyes are programmed to look at the world and automatically account for the lighting and tell us "this is blue" or "those are green." Or in the case of Crocogator's 'optical illusion'... "these strawberries are red"

This image is a pretty neat visual example of how our eyes work on that. Both images would be tagged with blue_apron and brown_skirt while our eyes can clearly understand that those colors aren't accurate. but we can look at them and understand that blue dress + yellow light = that color. This is why we arne't baffled by color while walking around at noon, at sunset, inside.... :)

A good artist is making use of lighting, as well as shading and highlights.

post #1648474 would be "blue_fur"... but theyr'e clearly intended to have white fur. IF i searched for blue_fur, I'd be very disappointed.
post #1648029 would probably be gray_fur, because the lighting is behind the character, but they are clearly intended to be snow-white.
post #751138 What color is this character? Well, other images say that they're white, though I'd admit, I'd probably tag yellow... but eyedroppering it, we'd also have to tag them purple.

eyedroppering is trying to apply logic to a place where intuition's needed a bit more.

Well, other images say that they're white, though I'd admit, I'd probably tag yellow...

Ah yeah, the Abyss problem. One more reason to use brains (and TWYK) with colors.

I agree with beige being invalidated completly, as it's almost entirely overlapped on most sides between cream and tan
Cream overlaps so heavily with white, yellow, and beige colors (and it's a very ambiguous color to the human eye), that it's better off aliased to invalid_color, or included in the tan tag (which I'm all for)

Tan overlaps with brown (which is in itself technically orange) a lot but there's usually a big enough difference to pick one.
"grey" is almost always a matter of contrasts, as two shades could be very light, but one is distinctly darker, in those cases, a fringe case of 'grey' is appropriate, as it is with blacks. I've seen plenty of black-bodied creatures that get a grey because there's two distinct shades of what would otherwise be black.

In fringe cases, where "cream" is the most appropriate tag, because it's smack-dab in the middle of that spectrum, I often tag both tags just to be sure, because almost all color theory is a matter of comparison, which is why so many colors are ambiguous.