That a printing process is not capable of reproducing a certain combination of hue, saturation, and value is not, repeat NOT attributable to any motive on the part of anyone, it’s a function of reflected vs. transmitted light and getting enough accuracy out of a fairly minimal technology.

I remember similar silly remarks made on the release of Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” where a reviewer commented on Ernest Dickerson “overcoming the inherent racism found in Kodak film stock” or some such nonsense. The reality is, it was still early in his career and he was finally beginning to understand holding accurate reproduction in the lower value areas of the film’s capture range – and no one gave any credit to the color timer at whatever lab they used, either!

All reproduction technologies are an approximation of reality. So is perception, for you solipsists out there.

The complaints about trouble reproducing nonwhite skin tones seem somehow akin to complaining about being unable to tighten a 7/8″ bolt with a 13/16″ box wrench. (As in, you got the wrench part right, now go find the right one for the job.)

Skin tones

Old comics weren’t very good with coloring non-whites.

It’s very challenging to not have tricks like gradients, randomized textures, etc.to fall back on and rely on a limited palette for your mood. Well worth doing in some cases, but the minute you want to do realistic fleshtones for different ethnicities, or have a person with black hair, you start to appreciate modern tools.

John Higgins pulled off a miracle back then, an atmosphere you don’t see in other comics of the era, or today’s, and the mechanical separation process from the old days was time-consuming and error prone, as the separators would cut tone from the color guides, and often got things wrong.

“In MY day, comics were written on strips of tree bark! And we had only two color– charcoal and blood! And we LIKED it!”

@Darren Garrison: I didn’t get that at all. I think all his claims ring true.

@g0d5m15t4k3: He linked that article for the good/bad colour comparisons at the bottom of the page. While I agree that the colours change between the two images, it is most likely a result of bad photoshop skills and jpeg compression (you can see the compression noise in the blue line version), not dishonesty. A bit of ooccam’s razor is good to apply before calling shenanigans.

@Joergen Geerds: You could have done it, but you didn’t. Yes, this look similar to other CMYK charts, but it has been laid out in 25% increments because it is designed to emulate the colour combinations used in the vintage printing processes. This google image results page will demonstrate that amonst the plethora of CMYK charts available you won’t see (m)any examples of charts laid out like this one.

Thanks to the creator for making this chart!

Link to the image on my Flickr page —> http://www.flickr.com/photos/46569090@N03/5756328705/

Because I saved each picture and put them in MS Paint next to each other and used the eyedropper to compare colors.The writer lied to me. The Purple of his cape and Red in the trees in that figure are different between the two pictures. I’ve taken color theory and its quite true that the adjacent colors can change how you perceive one color but his example showed a lie :(

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/128082/How%20To%20Color%20Comics%20The%20Marvel%20Way.pdf

Zip Martini posted it.

It’s not “Hey, look at this awesome thing” — it’s “Everyone is doing it wrong! Forward this to your friends and tell them that they’re doing it wrong!”

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have an instinctive reaction to push back on that.