G4: Pink vs. Purple

[Phekzhen]

That is quite awesome information!  We all perceive color slightly differently I think because our eyes don't see colors exactly the same, so unless we all agree and see what exactly makes pink "pink" than what is pink to one can be purple to another or lavender or whatever.  :Silly:

To make color science even MORE weird, how we perceive color is dependent on what language we grew up with!

Experiments have found that whether or not you can register a color depends on whether or not you have a name for it in your language. You can see the color, it just doesn't register in your mind.
One study compared some young children from England with kids from a tribe in Nambia. In the English language, young kids usually learn 11 basic colors (black, white, gray, red, green, blue, yellow, pink, orange, purple and brown) but in Himba it's only five. For instance, they lump red, orange and pink together and call it "serandu."

If you showed the Himba toddler a pink card and then later showed him a red one and ask if they're the same card, the kid would often mistakenly say yes -- because they're both "serandu." Same as if you showed you "Eggshell" and an hour later showed you "Bone" and asked if it was the same card from before. Now, again, they can see the colors; if you hold up a pink card and a red card next to each other, the English kid and Himba kid both would say they're different. But not when they see them one at a time.

In Russian, there's a different name for dark blue from light blue. And experiments have shown that people remember what a color is by name. So weather it's by "Glory's hair green" or Kraft dinner orange or just "taupe," assigning a color a name helps you make the distinction. That's why when we're given a bunch of shades (like with this pink/purple pony question) we can't exactly place colors, since we don't have actual names for the colors.

[hathorcat]

I am going with that ever popular My Little Pony colour of purple-pink!!

[Desert Rose]

Well considering that her hair is purple I can't help but comparing her body colour to that. And her body is definitly pink in my eyes. Or as others said, darker pink anyway.

[kittybethy]

Magenta!

[BeefyDia]

I've never thought she was anything but pink, till I came across this thread

[BrightIdea]

Hah, I was having trouble with deciding this, too!

I am extremely tempted to call her purple, but she does look really pink, too.

[Phekzhen]

I decided to be really scientific about this, without having to go into the color lab.

I pulled a picture of her from the My Little Wiki and load it up into Photoshop CS3. I used the eyedropper tool and took a 51x51 pixel average of color, and that color IS purple. It's #b46eac. Its closet Pantone chip is 2573.

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It'd be hard to stick her under a spectochromometer, as she's not really "flat."

Hope that sorts this question out for people!

[Elisto]

huh, color can be so tricky...that color you posted above I would definitely call purple, but the pony doesn't look that color to me...But I also know it's hard to tell since how we perceive color is also influenced by what colors are around it, along with everything else mentioned. I wouldn't call her magenta though. That's what I'd call Cadence's color based on that picture above.

[BrightSide]

I vote we change her to yellow.

I echo this sentiment entirely.

[Phekzhen]

huh, color can be so tricky...that color you posted above I would definitely call purple, but the pony doesn't look that color to me...But I also know it's hard to tell since how we perceive color is also influenced by what colors are around it, along with everything else mentioned. I wouldn't call her magenta though. That's what I'd call Cadence's color based on that picture above.

I took an average of her color. The best answer we can do is a spectrochromometer reading in a fully color-fixed room, with everyone wearing the same neutral white/grey color as the room, with 60k lights.

I held her up to the screen, and she's similar to the chip I posted, just less blue. But monitor lights need to be calibrated, too, so unless you go and grab a Pantone paint chip, this isn't a very good way of communicating a color.

[shockponie]

She's heliotrope.

2nd. ToolaRoola-y minus the shimmer.
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[Elisto]

Yes, I know, I get what you did. My point though, was that even two identical color patches can look totally different to a person depending on what color is next to it, so unless I put that color chip you made on top of the picture at the start of this thread, it's hard to really tell how close those two colors are. So even though I think that chip looks more purple (blue-ish) than the first picture, I realize it may not be.

[xoVanille]

She looks pink to me, in person.

[reanna-mator]

Yeah, it's ponies like Cupcake that make entries on Ponydex a bit troublesome. However, referring to the entry for her I made last year, I called her pink.

[StarlightGaze]

I consider her purple. Anything red or pink with a slight amount of blue is technically purple.