There are some colors that are just perfect! A deeply colored flower... a beautiful bird feather... the color of your baby's neck... Haven't we all wished that we could just find a way to select that color and use it in a design project?
The Color Picker Pen! That's it!
Korean designer Jinsu Park designed a concept pen that adopts the eyedropper tool from Photoshop for real life. The color picker pen enables colors in the environment to be scanned and instantly used for drawing.
First you identify something that is exactly the color you want to reproduce. Bring the pen up to it and capture the color using the built in sensor.
Then the pen mixes the right color for you and - voilà - there you have it! No more holding those little swatches up for a match.
Pantone, eat your heart out!
Now here's today's quiz. What's wrong with this lovely tool? Click on the image below to see how it works.
Discussion
By Carsten on Jul 17, 2009
Its´s RGB
By Johan Nel on Jul 17, 2009
What’s wrong? I don’t see any talk about how this is powered.
By Sparky on Jul 17, 2009
RGB ink? What a breakthrough!
By Brandon D. Stout on Jul 17, 2009
HEllO,
I see a few things wrong with the design. First of all its all in RGB. Second since the product is suppose to write in the color you want what about when you want to change colors. Do you have to wash cartriges out? Last from what i see it does not even tell you a pantone of waht color your using or the levels that comprise that color.
Thanks
Brandon D. Stout
Hollywood Printing and Graphics
By Akis on Jul 17, 2009
shouldn't it use subtractive color model (CMY)?
By Joao on Jul 17, 2009
It can't possibly use RGB ink, that's it!
By Patriick Henry on Jul 17, 2009
But, even if the ink cartridges were CMY instead of RGB, you'd still have to convert from RGB to CMY after scanning your perfectly color-matched sketch...correct?
By Adoniram on Jul 17, 2009
I presume that the issue is the "RGB Ink Catridge."
By Gail NIckel-Kailing on Jul 17, 2009
Adoniram,
And why? :-)
By Adoniram on Jul 17, 2009
Haha, well, according to my latest issue of Test Forms from RIT with the nice bit on RGB printing, it seems that as long as the pen can spray a fine screen of dots, absolutely nothing!
By lukeMV on Jul 17, 2009
Is this pen to draw on lightboards? (RGB = Additive Color Model)
By Javier Rodriguez-Borlado on Jul 17, 2009
I guess that the gamut will be an issue. you will not be able to print a gamut as big as the one that you will be able to scann. There should be another issue with the light. The color of the apple would be different in your office than on the street.
By Santa on Jul 17, 2009
From Wiki:
"RGB is a device-dependent color space: different devices detect or reproduce a given RGB value differently, since the color elements (such as phosphors or dyes) and their response to the individual R, G, and B levels vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, or even in the same device over time. Thus an RGB value does not define the same color across devices without some kind of color management."
By Santa on Jul 17, 2009
Also...RGB is an additive model......not sure they can reproduce that on paper...but I've been wrong before.
By Gail NIckel-Kailing on Jul 17, 2009
And what kind of image does RGB ink make - even sprayed with fine dots?
;-}
By Chris J on Jul 17, 2009
I don't believe you can get real color by RGB (Printing, that is) Isn't RGB is what is displayed for the eye, am I right?
By Adoniram on Jul 17, 2009
@Gail Well, being an additive model, probably terrible. I think that's what you're getting at, unless I'm missing the point!
By Adoniram on Jul 17, 2009
Though, I do recommend everyone take a look at the latest issue of Test Forms, which does have some impressive RGB printing, if you can call a three plate, reddish/greenish/bluish print "RGB."
By Phillip Crum on Jul 17, 2009
Didn't I see this thing in a Harry Potter movie??
By Patrick Henry on Jul 18, 2009
This thread brings up a question that I guess I'm not bright enough to formulate a coherent answer to. It's this: if can we print with transparent CMY inks which, when overprinted, give us percentages of RGB as well, why couldn't we also print with transparent RGB inks that, in the combinations of G+B, R+B, and R+G, would create CMY? Wasn't trichromatic separation into RGB the first form of color separation? What am I getting wrong here? TIA.
By Michael J on Jul 18, 2009
Problem is that color is in the eye of the beholder and the lighting condition. Not in the object.
RGB is a small gamut of what the eye can see. CMYK is a smaller gamut of what the eye can see.
Even if it weren't so, color needs a brain to look "right" No way to control lighting conditions in the real world.
That's why the great human separators who set the dials on the CEPs were artists and the transform curves from RGB to CMYK are such amazing technology.
By Bill M on Jul 21, 2009
RGB ink is the first of many problems. If you use the pen in the dark, what color does it write? How about if you use it under a yellow street light? Or if you write on green paper?
Color matching is an activity of details. Having something work in concept is very different than having it work in "real life".
By Andy McCourt on Jul 26, 2009
Bet it can't measure and write Yellow, Gail. I think you are looking for terms like 'Primary' and 'Subtractive' here? Maybe 'transmitted light' and 'reflected light'...am I on the right track?
By Gail NIckel-Kailing on Jul 27, 2009
You all are terrific! By Jove, I think they've got it!
:-)
Gail
By Henk Gianotten on Jul 27, 2009
We have a famous designer in Holland. He tells (and want us to believe) that one of his clients wanted a report to be printed in RGB.
No printer was (or could) print in RGB. One salesman of a large printing company accepted the job and printed the RGB images in CMYK. Voila!
They insist on getting the original RGB images!
Nobody at the design studio nor the customer (the largest telcon company in Holland) ever saw that the report was just made in CMYK.
If you believe, you really can!
By Andy McCourt on Jul 27, 2009
Henk, that's a great story! 10/10 to the salesman who didn't let the process interfere with customer expectations.
I will have to register the 'RGB Printing Company' now - to print for all the Photographers and Mac people who live in a Primary Colour World!
Someone should send Mr Jinsu Park a copy of Munsell's Theory of Colour.
Discussion
Join the discussion Sign In or Become a Member, doing so is simple and free