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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: therecorder on Tue, 11 September 2012, 22:30:12

Title: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: therecorder on Tue, 11 September 2012, 22:30:12: Can someone who has Red WASD keycaps please look at the three photos on this link, and tell me which red is the closest to the actual keycap color?

http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/37-key-cherry-mx-keycap-set.html
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: tp4tissue on Wed, 12 September 2012, 07:20:08: Hey man, this is a pointless venture, because monitors cannot be calibrated to mimic real life colors. and they will always be off depending on lighting conditions, different computers, ambient temperature

all those things affect the electronic output of color. For example high end monitors have active cooling to provide color consistency, like the new NEC pro lines.

None of those pictures would be close to the real product, because you can tell they tweaked the exposure setting a bit high to make the caps look brighter in the photo.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: tp4tissue on Wed, 12 September 2012, 07:21:22: Just buy a SINGLE cap of the color you want, and you'll know for sure. it's pretty darn cheap, so, i'd say worth it.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: therecorder on Wed, 12 September 2012, 07:23:27: Quote from: tp4tissue on Wed, 12 September 2012, 07:21:22
Just buy a SINGLE cap of the color you want, and you'll know for sure. it's pretty darn cheap, so, i'd say worth it.
Thanks... Good idea.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: tp4tissue on Wed, 12 September 2012, 07:32:12: Quote from: therecorder on Wed, 12 September 2012, 07:23:27
Quote from: tp4tissue on Wed, 12 September 2012, 07:21:22
Just buy a SINGLE cap of the color you want, and you'll know for sure. it's pretty darn cheap, so, i'd say worth it.
Thanks... Good idea.

;D

Make sure to Buy the RED R4 cap, because the other row caps won't be able to go in as many places.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: dorkvader on Wed, 12 September 2012, 09:39:04: I only see two photos of Red in the link. I like the first one (Middle photo) as it includes a better contrast over the keycap. You can see how it looks like in light or shadow.

Neither look like the real thing on my laptop. Both do on my CRT. Stupid electronic displays: We should be using e-ink for this sort of thing already. ('cause it uses actual real honest-to-god pigment)
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: jeroplane on Wed, 12 September 2012, 09:55:56: According to my Dell LCD monitor as well as my MacBook Pro, I can tell you that the photos they have depict the red as a bit more orange-y than it is in real life. I was concerned about this, but upon receiving it, it looks more red than it does in the photos.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: therecorder on Wed, 12 September 2012, 10:17:02: Quote from: jeroplane on Wed, 12 September 2012, 09:55:56
According to my Dell LCD monitor as well as my MacBook Pro, I can tell you that the photos they have depict the red as a bit more orange-y than it is in real life. I was concerned about this, but upon receiving it, it looks more red than it does in the photos.
Good... That's what I was hoping for.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: IvanIvanovich on Wed, 12 September 2012, 10:19:23: I would call wasd red 'brick red' as it has that sort of dull orangish tone to them. It's really not a very good red in my opinion.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: therecorder on Wed, 12 September 2012, 10:47:22: Went to order, and they're out of red (sets and individuals).

Anyone know where I can get a 37 keycap set of Blank Red ABS or PBT keycaps? Already tried the $20 PBT set from Qtang, but he didn't have Blanks (in Red), and the alpha ones that he sent me were way too pinkish.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: IvanIvanovich on Wed, 12 September 2012, 10:48:41: Try imsto. They had those red ones with the silly font, but said something about able to supply same red in blank.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: therecorder on Wed, 12 September 2012, 10:51:22: Quote from: lysol on Wed, 12 September 2012, 10:48:41
Try imsto. They had those red ones with the silly font, but said something about able to supply same red in blank.
Those are the same pinkish ones that I got from Qtang.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: IvanIvanovich on Wed, 12 September 2012, 10:54:22: Well i didn't see them in person, but they don't look pink in the pictures... pretty sure it's the same red they used in the rgby set, and someone had pic nect to Cherry rgb and it was quite close.
(http://www.aikb.cn/image/26xiaoren/9.jpg.JPG)
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: therecorder on Wed, 12 September 2012, 10:57:11: Quote from: lysol on Wed, 12 September 2012, 10:54:22
Well i didn't see them in person, but they don't look pink in the pictures... pretty sure it's the same red they used in the rgby set, and someone had pic nect to Cherry rgb and it was quite close.
Show Image
(http://www.aikb.cn/image/26xiaoren/9.jpg.JPG)

Oh, them. Not the ones I thought you meant... I'll have to ask him... Thanks.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: Daniel Beardsmore on Wed, 12 September 2012, 16:51:45: Quote from: dorkvader on Wed, 12 September 2012, 09:39:04
Neither look like the real thing on my laptop. Both do on my CRT.

Laptop displays are generally awful. They're lit from below instead of behind (regardless of whether the source is a CCFL or bank of LEDs), so the illumination and black level vary from bottom to top. They also have desaturated colours, and red in particular is very grey on a laptop flat panel. I did try to find out precisely what property of laptop displays causes this effect, and drew a blank. Typically they also have reduced viewing angle compared to a good desktop TN panel.

Desktop flat panels are extremely saturated – when I first moved from a CRT to an LCD the colour vibrance almost blew out my eyeballs. I couldn't go back to CRT with its fuzzy-at-any-resolution image, lack of ClearType, prominent shadow mask, never-quite-square-in-any-direction image and weak colour. (Aperture grille gave you a sharper picture but nothing will ever make the image anything but jelly shaped no matter how much you adjust the keystone, pincushion, parallelogram, pentragram and neutron-flow-reversal dials.)

I've noticed that Dell's desktop TN panels have been steadily deteriorating and the current ones are just too awful to use. Most of the picture is wrong – the sides are dull and yellowed and the bottom has top-down inversion (shadows become halos), just from looking straight at it, where old Dell TNs didn't show halos even when looking almost vertically down at it.

Besides, LCD is capable of far more colours than we normally see on them. The problem is that no present-day OS is capable of dealing with high-gamut displays, because it means that the GUI has to reprofile all graphics from narrow to wide gamut dynamically and support a way for a program to specify gamut or colour profile with every graphic, e.g. a mail reader could be using high gamut icons from the vendor, a custom toolbar with low gamut icons from a third-party, and images in e-mails with no known colour profile at all. Browsers are now supporting colour profiles in images, which is the start of this process as it allows at least parts of some pages to be reprofiled correctly. High gamut displays exist, but you get blown-out colour as a result unless you switch back to the sRGB profile.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: Redndwhite on Wed, 12 September 2012, 20:42:07: The red WASD caps are comparable to the red bell peppers at the supermarket. Not glossy and are tinged slightly orange.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: MissMurd3r84 on Thu, 13 September 2012, 17:31:34: Quote from: lysol on Wed, 12 September 2012, 10:54:22
Well i didn't see them in person, but they don't look pink in the pictures... pretty sure it's the same red they used in the rgby set, and someone had pic nect to Cherry rgb and it was quite close.
Show Image
(http://www.aikb.cn/image/26xiaoren/9.jpg.JPG)

Aww man, I kind of like those keys. Wonder how much they are. :)
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: gbohn on Thu, 13 September 2012, 19:01:36: > Hey man, this is a pointless venture, because monitors cannot be calibrated to mimic real life colors.

I don't think that's quite right, only 'practically' right :) .

As I understand it, you should in theory be able to at least come up with the same image on different monitors looking fairly close to each other if a lot of things are correct (which they probably aren't).

If the image file is tagged to the right color space, and all the systems use color management and have been color calibrated and are decent quality monitors it could work. There are standards and targets for the color rendition.

And, if the whole chain (from taking the image to displaying it) is calibrated, you could do even better than that.

But, since most monitors/systems aren't going meet these requirement, different people are probably not going to see exactly the same rendition...

If you're brave enough to get a glimpse of how bad (or good) your display is at rendering the 'right' colors, you could go to http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ to see. You could start with 'Viewing angle' and 'Gamma Calibration'.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: tp4tissue on Thu, 13 September 2012, 21:44:25: I have a probe calibrated 3007wfphc, And I can tell you the picture exposure is pushed... so it's NOT an accurate depiction.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: gbohn on Fri, 14 September 2012, 12:25:35: > so it's NOT an accurate depiction.

I didn't say that it was (or wasn't for that matter).

> because monitors cannot be calibrated to mimic real life colors

My point was that this is not impossible (to get close enough) , just unlikely with the general hardware and setup of what most people are going to have.

For what it's worth, I have a NEC LCD2490Wuxi-2 that I periodically hardware calibrate. But, most people aren't going to have this type of setup...

So my display should at least be close to displaying what the image 'says' to display. Even then, It's another question as far as if the image creator has an image that accurately represents what they want to show...
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: tp4tissue on Fri, 14 September 2012, 17:12:34: Quote from: gbohn on Fri, 14 September 2012, 12:25:35
> so it's NOT an accurate depiction.

I didn't say that it was (or wasn't for that matter).

> because monitors cannot be calibrated to mimic real life colors

My point was that this is not impossible (to get close enough) , just unlikely with the general hardware and setup of what most people are going to have.

For what it's worth, I have a NEC LCD2490Wuxi-2 that I periodically hardware calibrate. But, most people aren't going to have this type of setup...

So my display should at least be close to displaying what the image 'says' to display. Even then, It's another question as far as if the image creator has an image that accurately represents what they want to show...

LOLOL, keep dreaming. Modern flat panel technology is only capable of reproducing 70% of the visible spectrum... Your color calibration is WORTHLESS when it comes to representing Real Life.

I'm not knocking your monitor. I'm just saying, it's NOT even close.
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: Daniel Beardsmore on Fri, 14 September 2012, 17:25:07: The bit that gets me – RGB works on the basis that white has three times as much light (R + G + B) as any of the primaries, as opposed to simply a different spectral spread. There's no such thing as white though – looking at a bright full moon in a twilight sky demonstrates the eye's logarithmic perception that cannot be captured in a display or on film. A photo still has a "white" moon, but the dazzling intensity just isn't there. (Black clothes are another fun example: how can an object that bears shadows, possibly be black? By definition that's impossible.)

As such, so long as I can sit in front of an IPS panel display without too many DVI-induced blackouts and lurches, I'm content. (Seriously WTF is the matter with DVI? It's another fault-tolerance-lacking mess like CDDA.)
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: gbohn on Fri, 14 September 2012, 21:30:15: > Modern flat panel technology is only capable of reproducing 70% of the visible spectrum...

> I'm not knocking your monitor. I'm just saying, it's NOT even close.

> Your color calibration is WORTHLESS when it comes to representing Real Life.

Believe what you like...

Sure, today's monitors can't display the entire range of brightnesses/contrast and colors that most peoples eyes can perceive. But it can come close enough for its purpose in most cases. (I'm not going to count cases where the color is known to be wrong, say a Wide gamut monitor incorrectly using the wrong color space).

A monitor can be very close for the Gamut of the color space it is designed to display (say sRGB). Or perhaps a larger color space like Adobe RGB.

Both are going to be a subset of the eyes 'color space', but are probably adequate for what the O.P. wanted (aside from the question of whether peoples setups were likely to be accurate enough in the first place)...

Just because a subset of the world can't be relatively closely approximated on a display doesn't mean that there are aren't large parts of it that can.

Fine, use your display the way you want (apparently cursing it's hideous color inadequacies ;) ). But I won't be chucking out my monitor any time soon because is seems a reasonable approximation of 'real life' to me for most of the situations where I expect it to be.

At any rate, this seems to be straying off topic...
Title: Re: WASD Keycap Colors
Post by: wasdkeyboards on Fri, 14 September 2012, 21:49:15: We use Dell U2312HM's in the office and we try to make the pictures look as close to real life as possible. Lighting really affects how things look too. We have fluorescent lighting in the office, so we go off that. The color would obviously look a little different in incandescent lighting. Especially if you are using "warm" lights.

The pantone color for the keycap is 180 C. So you can look it up that way, too.

We considered switching to a deeper red color before, but since laser etching looks best with lighter colors, we decided to stick with this red so that legends are more legible. (On a side note, we will be discontinuing the current blue color once it runs out for the same reason).