Colour Charts for Decals / Customization

[Shadows]

Realising the need for a more complete colour chart, I made one.

Much like most of what I do, it's a bit excessive.

It also serves as a guide to the colour names as used by Bricklink, Peeron, and LEGO, which makes it useful when looking things up on those sites. I know I've been stumped by some of the names that LEGO calls things, not even referring to standard green as green. They're funny like that.

I hope it serves you well in your customizing needs.

Remember: These are the official LEGO colours as are used for parts. They may use more or different ones when producing patterns on pieces, and some would be difficult to replicate, such as the metallics and pearl effects.

These colours are only a guide and should not be considered a limitation to what can be used. They simple serve to provide some uniformity to designs and help your designs to the pieces you would apply them to. Try to remember that some pieces are more readily available in certain colours and take that into account while designing. It isn't realistic to make a torso decal that requires a colour in which one has never been made, for example.

If you use a different chart, please feel free to post it in this thread as well.

[Hinckley]

What, no Fabuland brown?

This looks great! Nice work Imperialshadows. Thanks.

[DoubleT]

Must have bin hard work... Btw nice to see vader's codes used

[Captain Green Hair]

Must have bin hard work... Btw nice to see vader's codes used

Hex codes can be patented now? Cool, i didn't know that

[Hinckley]

Btw nice to see vader's codes used

The codes from both charts match Peeron's.

EDIT: Actually, Vader's chart doesn't resemble shadow's chart in any way, shape or form...

[Siegfried]

Great work... ya know I'm tempted to make a program out of this...

The codes from both charts match Peeron's.

He could be joking...

[Stash2Sixx]

Thank You! This is great, nice job!

[Shadows]

Must have bin hard work... Btw nice to see vader's codes used

Vader has codes? OH, you mean that he picked up his from the same place I did, Peeron. Gotcha.

Sadly, his chart was far too incomplete to be of any use and since it kept magically disappearing from the site, I started over fresh to prevent that problem from continuing. I'm sure it's accidental, of course.

Update: Well, comparing that copy from Brickshelf, they aren't even vaguely similar. I knew it was incomplete, but I didn't realise it didn't correspond with the widely accepted colour values. It's definitely not Peeron based. I don't know where that chart came from, or how anyone could confuse the two.

[Siegfried]

imperialshadows I'm close to having a prototype of that program; do you have this table in text form? It would save me a lot of typing....

[Shadows]

imperialshadows I'm close to having a prototype of that program; do you have this table in text form? It would save me a lot of typing....

Surprisingly, I do, minus the Sample block and my sig at the end. I know you love those.

I'll admit, you probably didn't expect that I did it this way, but maybe it will make your life easier.

[Siegfried]

Surprisingly, I do, minus the Sample block and my sig at the end. I know you love those.

It's perfect imperialshadows! It isn't finished yet, but I've finished enough to give you an idea of what I am doing. Download from here.

[Shadows]

It's perfect imperialshadows! It isn't finished yet, but I've finished enough to give you an idea of what I am doing. Download from here.

That's very interesting, sort of a "too lazy to look through the whole chart" cross referencing tool. I like it, I think. It has a simple elegance to it.

I wonder if it would be possible to add a button to drop the hex code for the currently displayed colour into the clipboard, so it could then be pasted to the paint program of choice? Just an idea...

[Siegfried]

That's very interesting, sort of a "too lazy to look through the whole chart" cross referencing tool. I like it, I think. It has a simple elegance to it.

That was the idea. I like your chart but it's too big for many screens... including mine.

I wonder if it would be possible to add a button to drop the hex code for the currently displayed colour into the clipboard, so it could then be pasted to the paint program of choice? Just an idea...

Very easily done. I'll add it next.

EDIT: Done! I added some more colours too. I'll try to finish it tomorrow...

[Hinckley]

Did you add Fabuland brown?

[darthgrieveous]

Hello there.

I created a gimp color palette based on Imperialshadows color chart. The palette can be used in The Gimp and Inkscape. The color names are based on official Lego names.

Just place it in the corresponding palette folder.

In Linux it should be

for Gimp: $home/.gimp-2.2/palettes/

for Inkscape: $home/.inkscape/palettes/

In Windows it should be

C:\Documents and Settings\$USER\.gimp-2.2\palettes\

C:\Documents and Settings\$USER\.inkscape\palettes\

[LuxorV]

Hello there.

I created a gimp color palette based on Imperialshadows color chart. The palette can be used in The Gimp and Inkscape. The color names are based on official Lego names.

Just place it in the corresponding palette folder.

In Linux it should be

for Gimp: $home/.gimp-2.2/palettes/

for Inkscape: $home/.inkscape/palettes/

In Windows it should be

C:\Documents and Settings\$USER\.gimp-2.2\palettes\

C:\Documents and Settings\$USER\.inkscape\palettes\

Thanks for your contribution, darthgrieveous.

Although I don't use those program myself, I'm sure a lot of people will find your palette most useful

You may now want to introduce yourself in this thread, and have fun in the EB community

LuxorV

[Dutch]

Sorry to bump such an old topic.

Shadows your dark red is off just a bit. It's a little to dark.

[Shadows]

Shadows your dark red is off just a bit. It's a little to dark.

As many times as they've changed it since Cafe Corner, lighter, darker, more brown ... I don't think it's possible to pick a 'right' colour anymore. I would, however, be happy to add an alternate to it if you can provide one.

[Dutch]

Sure thing.

Image Used and Removed (a little oversized for it's purpose)

[LuxorV]

I'll add the Official LEGO 2010 colour palette released some weeks ago:

(Click to view it at full size)

@ clone killer - thanks for your contribution, but could you please reduce the image size to 800 pixels max, especially since this is not a showcase of the design, but just a reference for the colour? Thank you

LuxorV

[Shadows]

Sure thing.

Yours is #81081B, which is definitely a bit more red and less dark. I'll add it to an update at some point also incorporating some of the new colours we were shown.

Thanks!

[Aanchir]

This isn't something that's graphical in form (it's a web-based chart), but I've found myself making good use of the official LEGO color list at Isodomos.com. It has LEGO's official RGB values for their colors, as well as official names, sample images, and a cross-reference with AFOL names. Of course, I've only really used it for BIONICLE art (indeed, I discovered after Peeron's two similar lists fell short of expectations), so I can't verify its accuracy at matching actual LEGO parts in these colors.

[shiftaltcmd]

What colors are the original from TLG? RGB or Pantone?

If it is RGB we need to know what kind of RGB, because it comes in different flavors (color-spaces). The values in the lists are of no use if we cannot tie them to the correct color-space.

RGB we have AdobeRGB, AppleRGB, sRGB, ColorMatchRGB and ProPhotoRGB (in Photoshop)

CMYK, we have European (Fogra), American (SWOP) and Japanese. CMYK, less of a problem because some of the Lego-colors are impossible to print with traditional CMYK, a printer with six or more colors is needed.

I took a random color, Blue/Bright blue.

CMYK values: 100/47/0/0

RGB values: 0D69AB or 13/105/171

Pantone 393C

Pantone is a standard so I will use that as a base.

Photoshop will translate Pantone 393C into:

sRGB 0/70/173

Adobe RGB 0/71/169

ProPhoto RGB 50/54/147

Apple RGB 0/52/160

Colormatch RGB 0/51/160

US Sheet coated 100/65/1/0

US Web coated 100/76/8/1

Europe Fogra 27 99/74/0/0

Europe Fogra 39 100/70/5/1

Japan Coated 100/71/3/0

Very far from the numbers in the list.

My screen is probably showing colors slightly different from yours. But you can see the difference between the colors.

I used different color-spaces but the same numbers. All of the RGB-colors are 13/105/171 and the CMYK-colors 100/47/0/0. They are all quite different from Pantone 293C.

Isodomos and Shadows RGB-color is very similar, identical, to Adobe RGB and sRGB (the two most common). But far away from the Pantone color.

Screens and printers can be calibrated. And with some adjustments of the list we can get very close to perfection.

After that the only problem is TLGs inconsistency.

[anothergol]

I know this thread is pretty old, but, even today I can't find any reliable chart.

I know the printing industry relies to CMYK, and that I could trust these as well as Pantone colors, but..

1. if I just take the black, things are already wrong:

-charts usually report it as Pantone "Process Black C". Looks pretty fair. But then they list it as 1B2A34, like in the first chart in this list, & plenty of places. That doesn't look right at all. It has a strong blue tint, I'm not seeing Lego's black as blue (that, or everything else that's black in my house, is actually blue). Starting from that, hard to trust other colors.
Perhaps 1B2A34 looks right in some Pantone color profile that I'm not finding? (if there is even such a thing, not in Photoshop that's for sure). Even if that's true, using that blueish 1B2A34 to display Lego black on a web page still looks pretty wrong.
 

2. even in apps, like Lego's own LDD, and Stud.io, the colors can be way off, and very different from each other. Pretty weird that all those sources can't agree on colors.

[meepinater]

hooray! thanks a lot! i can actually create decals with the right fleshy skin color, thanks!