Quote:
mechman wrote:
 It was pure speculation on my part. That's why I picked up the Winter Mist there last week. To test this. Where was your Winter Mist from Harp? I know that it was more dead on neutral than my Winter Mist mix was. |
By "your Winter Mist" do you mean the last batch you got from Lowe's?
My first quart of Winter Mist came from my local True Value store. It was what I used to make up my test batch of WM/HE558 5:1.
The readings (RGB values) you got from my samples were:
True Value Winter Mist: 226-223-224
WM/HE558 5:1 mix: 194-195-194
The Lowe's Winter Mist measured 218-221-222 and I haven't made a HE558 mix with it yet.
When I painted the samples to send to you I noticed that the True Value WM appeard to have a reddish hue when I compared it to known neutral grays, which your measurements proved to be the case, but only slightly. The Lowe's WM, while it appeared to match the neutral grays better, is actually the tiniest bit on the blue side. When the two WM paints are compared side-by-side the True Value mix seems to be off-color towards red, which I mentioned to you and Bill via PM. It's strange how it produced a HE558 mix that is almost dead-on neutral.
I'd like to take a moment to examine the two WM paints above. When viewed by themselves both paints seem to be gray. It's when they are compared to each other, or a neutral gray, that a very viewable difference can be seen.
The True Value WM RGB values only differ 3 points. The Lowe's WM values only differ 4 points. The two together differ only 2 points in the Blue and Green values (a very close match), but they differ 8 points in the Red value. I think I'll mix the two WM's together and see how it averages out. In theory, it should be about dead-on neutral.
BTW, all my HE558 mixes were measured to the milliliter using syringes.
All this reminds me of something a friend told me years ago. He was the head of the lamp division (light bulbs) of Westinghouse. I sure wish he was around today, he could answer a lot of questions I have about DIY screens and projectors. Sadly, he passed away. Anyway, he told me that the human eye is very poor at determining colors with no reference point (which is why we can watch gray screens, all the colors are relative.
), but that when comparing two colors the human eye can discern very minute differences in shade and hue.