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Colorverse Anti-Matter vs A Different Bottle of Anti-Matter : Crazy Difference!


Matthew TWP

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I was watching a YouTube video recently from The Dormouse's Desk channel, where they were swatching inks from the Triangle Pen Show. One of the inks was Colorverse Anti-Matter, and the swatch in the video is completely green. Light green... almost a mint green. (Looking at the thumbnail for the video, it appears to be the second swatch from the left). The swatch is made around the 8:30 mark of this video.
 

 

That reminded me that I had purchased the same ink about two years previously. It was either two or three dollars during a great sale at Pen Chalet, but it's a shimmer ink, which I have since learned to despise, so it's just been sitting on my shelf since that time.

 

But my ink is a completely different color.

 

Mine basically matches the color of the label, so I suspect that mine is correct... at at least, was at the time that it was made. Here's what my ink looks like:

 

colorverse-anti-matter-bottle.thumb.jpg.b475b7d1d1bd165a672c84c52cefe9fe.jpg

 

colorverse-antimatter-swatch-no-card.thumb.jpg.a23f123b701d0985293916fc481a75bf.jpg

 

For reference, I've left the neutral grey card in this one...

 

colorverse-antimatter-swatch-with-grey-card.thumb.jpg.55991ebe03f75be2d52cc71cc7586cce.jpg

 

And here's how it looks on some different papers...

 

colorverse-anti-matter-paper-swatches.thumb.jpg.7c421c8e212ddb58abf8d29d78b21b24.jpg

 

So, the question is:  did Colorverse DRAMATICALLY change the color of this ink? Or did the Dormouse get a bad bottle of ink? If so, it looks like they only got the greenish color from the mix that should have contained several others (and some glitter).  Here's a sort of chromagraph on a paper towel:

 

colorverse-anti-matter.thumb.jpg.145ecf26f01a6abc787ac9a71394e893.jpg

 

So, the outermost color ring on this paper towel thing looks a lot like the color of the ink in question. That's my guess about what's going on here.

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2 minutes ago, mizgeorge said:

I think they've got a mislabelled bottle. That doesn't look like any Colorverse antimatter I've ever seen. 

Agreed! But it DOES look like the outer ring of color in my chromagraph, I think. Is it really possible that when they were mixing that batch, the other colors were left out? I don't know. But I've also looked through the rest of the Colorverse colors and don't see anything that's a good match for that color, either. 

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I also just discovered that the standard version of this ink doesn't have any glitter in it. I wish that I'd run into that one instead. 

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Hi FPN friends,

 

That's actually my video, and my weird version of Anti-Matter. I definitely don't have a glistening version. 

 

In comparison of my other swatches, it's really giving me Sailor 164 vibes.

 

Is this worth contacting Colorverse about? 

untitled-1.jpg

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1 hour ago, Cynickers said:

Hi FPN friends,

 

That's actually my video, and my weird version of Anti-Matter. I definitely don't have a glistening version. 

 

In comparison of my other swatches, it's really giving me Sailor 164 vibes.

 

Is this worth contacting Colorverse about? 

untitled-1.jpg

Yes, contact them.

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On 9/8/2021 at 2:54 AM, yazeh said:

I didn't watch the video but I'm a sucker for those dusky purples... thanks a lot :thumbup: 

 

On 9/8/2021 at 3:31 AM, Matthew TWP said:

I also just discovered that the standard version of this ink doesn't have any glitter in it. I wish that I'd run into that one instead. 


Yes, I'm a total sucker for them too and the Anti-matter sans glitter-matter is the one Colorverse ink I've really been wanting. Thanks for another peek - even the glitter doesn't lessen my desire for it ...

My pens for sale: https://www.facebook.com/jaiyen.pens  

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Sorry for this unrelated question - if it should go into its own thread, please let me know.

 

I see the photos above have grey reference cards. I have a good idea how to use those to set a camera's white balance. Can a photo with a grey reference card in it be used to correct color balance on the viewer's display to most accurately show the original colors? If yes, how?

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1 hour ago, PithyProlix said:

Sorry for this unrelated question - if it should go into its own thread, please let me know.

 

I'm sure I've seen many discussion threads on FPN that covered various aspects of colour calibration.

 

1 hour ago, PithyProlix said:

Can a photo with a grey reference card in it be used to correct color balance on the viewer's display to most accurately show the original colors?

 

Deliberately not taking your question to imply either strictly require automation, or that the procedure is not too onerous, difficult or stressful to the user so as to be worth doing, but simply addressing whether the possibility exists (cf. “can”)…

 

I'd assume it depends on whether (i) the individual viewer has a sensing-and-reporting instrument‡ external to his/her display device that is capable of reliably producing at least a yes-no answer, but preferably a numeric deviation-from value, in assessing whether a particular, narrow area of the screen, is correctly displaying a known or agreed reference colour, and (ii) whether there are controls that said viewer can use to adjust individual aspects of the rendering to adjust and “correct” the output.

 

1 hour ago, PithyProlix said:

If yes, how?

 

It fundamentally comes down to a sort of T.O.T.E. (test-operate-test-exit) loop. You, or the inanimate instrument, knows how a reference grey square in the supplied image ought to be presented by the display device. Is the display device already doing so? If not, make some adjustment (More red bias, or less? More brightness? Cooler colour temperature in general?) to how the display device renders the image, and test again, through however many cycles of the inner loop until the user is satisfied that the fidelity of the colour(s) displayed is acceptable.

 

What is deliberately not specified above is which adjustments to make, and by how much. That could be fully automated, or machine-assisted and guided by some sort of software in an electronic device, or just through blind trial-and-error and keep trying until the user either gets it just right or gives up.

 

 

The individual viewer or user's eyeballs and brain could serve as that instrument. After all, we're only talking about satisfying him or her that his/her display device of choice is rendering the colours in the image sufficiently accurately, right?

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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On 9/9/2021 at 12:06 AM, PithyProlix said:

Sorry for this unrelated question - if it should go into its own thread, please let me know.

 

I see the photos above have grey reference cards. I have a good idea how to use those to set a camera's white balance. Can a photo with a grey reference card in it be used to correct color balance on the viewer's display to most accurately show the original colors? If yes, how?

 

Sorry that I didn't see these questions earlier... apparently I need to update my notification settings here.

 

Color calibration is a pretty big topic, and of course, it's pretty useless unless everyone involved has calibrated monitors so that they're all seeing the same end result. For the type of work that I do, I have to keep my monitor calibrated anyway.

 

Anyway, there is a relatively simple process for getting accurate colors, but you can't do it with just a grey card. (A grey card will get your greys neutral at one particular tonal value (128,128,128, for example), but darker or lighter tones might be tinted one way or the other.)

 

Here's what you need:

  1. You need a grey card to set the correct exposure and white balance (this isn't absolutely necessary, but it makes things easier).
  2. You need a color checker card to calibrate the colors across a large section of the color gamut (and white balance, if not done with a grey card).
  3. You need to shoot RAW files in your camera so that you can adjust the colors without loss of data (color relationships). You also don't have to worry about the camera's color balance this way, since no color balance is baked into the image file.
  4. You need consistent, high quality light. Sunlight is great but hard to work with, so studio strobes are ideal for stills, or high CRI LED video lights for video. (CRI is Color Rendering Index)
  5. You need calibration software.

The process is this:

 

You set up your light source and use the grey card to get the perfect exposure for medium grey, and set your camera to manual exposure and fix the exposure there. Under the same light source (same distance, etc) at the same exposure, take a photo of the color checker. Then, under the same light, take your photos of your ink or pens, etc, and load all of the images onto your computer.

 

Depending on what calibration software you use, the process from here may be a little different. Most color checkers come with their own software (X-rite, Spyder, etc). I use a calibration software called Lumariver, and sometimes Spyderchecker. In any case, you load the photo of the color checker into the software, and it detects the color patches, and adjusts the color settings of the image to match the calibration standards, making the colors perfect for that image... or as perfect as possible with a 24 patch color checker. There are color checkers out there with hundreds of patches, but since I know that most people who are viewing my images do not even have calibrated monitors, I can't justify spending the money on one 🙂  Anyway... then you output the color settings from that image as a color profile, and then apply it to all of the other images taken in that shoot, and they will also have perfect color. I use a little one like this:

 

_DSC9969.thumb.jpg.a157375a28da22b7f02a44a0dc85fe56.jpg

 

Technically, you'll need to create a profile like this for each lighting situation (natural light, LED light, tungsten light, etc) and for each lens, since each lens will render colors differently. But if you're always shooting your pictures that need to be calibrated with just one light setup with one lens, you can just do this process once, though you will have to set the white balance in Lightroom or whatever software you're using as an editor.

 

(Of course, there are a lot of things that you can do after the fact to mess with the colors, so just because they start off accurate doesn't mean they will stay that way if you start adding saturation or playing with the curves or adding exposure, etc. )

 

So, it takes a little time and money, but there's nothing difficult about it. Let me know if you think it would be helpful for me to make a video about this sort of thing.

 

Good luck!

 

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4 hours ago, Matthew TWP said:

 

Sorry that I didn't see these questions earlier... apparently I need to update my notification settings here.

 

Color calibration is a pretty big topic, and of course, it's pretty useless unless everyone involved has calibrated monitors so that they're all seeing the same end result. For the type of work that I do, I have to keep my monitor calibrated anyway.

 

Anyway, there is a relatively simple process for getting accurate colors, but you can't do it with just a grey card. (A grey card will get your greys neutral at one particular tonal value (128,128,128, for example), but darker or lighter tones might be tinted one way or the other.)

 

Here's what you need:

  1. You need a grey card to set the correct exposure and white balance (this isn't absolutely necessary, but it makes things easier).
  2. You need a color checker card to calibrate the colors across a large section of the color gamut (and white balance, if not done with a grey card).
  3. You need to shoot RAW files in your camera so that you can adjust the colors without loss of data (color relationships). You also don't have to worry about the camera's color balance this way, since no color balance is baked into the image file.
  4. You need consistent, high quality light. Sunlight is great but hard to work with, so studio strobes are ideal for stills, or high CRI LED video lights for video. (CRI is Color Rendering Index)
  5. You need calibration software.

The process is this:

 

You set up your light source and use the grey card to get the perfect exposure for medium grey, and set your camera to manual exposure and fix the exposure there. Under the same light source (same distance, etc) at the same exposure, take a photo of the color checker. Then, under the same light, take your photos of your ink or pens, etc, and load all of the images onto your computer.

 

Depending on what calibration software you use, the process from here may be a little different. Most color checkers come with their own software (X-rite, Spyder, etc). I use a calibration software called Lumariver, and sometimes Spyderchecker. In any case, you load the photo of the color checker into the software, and it detects the color patches, and adjusts the color settings of the image to match the calibration standards, making the colors perfect for that image... or as perfect as possible with a 24 patch color checker. There are color checkers out there with hundreds of patches, but since I know that most people who are viewing my images do not even have calibrated monitors, I can't justify spending the money on one 🙂  Anyway... then you output the color settings from that image as a color profile, and then apply it to all of the other images taken in that shoot, and they will also have perfect color. I use a little one like this:

 

_DSC9969.thumb.jpg.a157375a28da22b7f02a44a0dc85fe56.jpg

 

Technically, you'll need to create a profile like this for each lighting situation (natural light, LED light, tungsten light, etc) and for each lens, since each lens will render colors differently. But if you're always shooting your pictures that need to be calibrated with just one light setup with one lens, you can just do this process once, though you will have to set the white balance in Lightroom or whatever software you're using as an editor.

 

(Of course, there are a lot of things that you can do after the fact to mess with the colors, so just because they start off accurate doesn't mean they will stay that way if you start adding saturation or playing with the curves or adding exposure, etc. )

 

So, it takes a little time and money, but there's nothing difficult about it. Let me know if you think it would be helpful for me to make a video about this sort of thing.

 

Good luck!

 

 

Wow, thanks for all the great info. My question was about color matching on the viewers' side. If the photographer goes to the trouble of setting white balance with a grey card and includes the grey card in the image, etc., is there a way that the viewer can set the display so the colors match the best? Or is it just that displays are calibrated separately to some universally determined standard? 

My pens for sale: https://www.facebook.com/jaiyen.pens  

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41 minutes ago, PithyProlix said:

is there a way that the viewer can set the display so the colors match the best?

 

That depends on the particular display device. First the viewer would need to have access to controls — either on the device's physical user interface, or in a software user interface running on a connected computing device — that allow adjustments to different aspects to be made; there is no guarantee that such controls are available to the device's user.

 

Then, where such controls are available and accessible, they need to allow sufficient range for the desired adjustments. For example, if the reference grey patches appear too cool, but on a scale of 0 to 100 the control of Red is already set to 100, then the user may not be able to set the display to make the colour appear any warmer.

 

51 minutes ago, PithyProlix said:

Or is it just that displays are calibrated separately to some universally determined standard? 

 

No.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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1 hour ago, PithyProlix said:

 

Wow, thanks for all the great info. My question was about color matching on the viewers' side. If the photographer goes to the trouble of setting white balance with a grey card and includes the grey card in the image, etc., is there a way that the viewer can set the display so the colors match the best? Or is it just that displays are calibrated separately to some universally determined standard? 

Ahh,  I see. 🙂 I should have read your question more carefully!

 

First, I included that grey card because if there's something on screen that people KNOW is neutral, then psychologically, they can make the adjustment and have a better perception of the ink's true color.  Or at least, if it doesn't look neutral on their display, they know that they're not getting an accurate representation of the color, either.  Most consumer monitors are not factory calibrated to an industry standard, and there's no way to match two monitors' colors from a single point of reference (a neutral grey)... even 24 standard color swatches aren't enough for some people's needs.

 

For photographers and other graphics professionals there's a common way to calibrate monitors so that they all show the same thing.  As a photographer, I use a monitor calibrator, which hangs down from the top of my monitor and reads the color from the center of the screen during calibration, and the software that goes along with it adjusts the color output from the GPU to match an industry standard. (I use a Datacolor Spyder Elite 5, which is at least a generation old now, but still works just fine. They used to cost about $100, but prices seem to be going up.) As A Smug Dill mentioned, that does sometimes also require making some adjustments to the brightness and contrast of the monitor (you'll usually get a wizard on screen to help with that) to reach the industry standards, at least to get to the best starting-off point for the software to work from. Most of the work is done by the software, and the calibration process can take a half hour or more, as it changes the colors displayed on the screen, reads them again, makes adjustments, reads again, etc. 

 

When you're finished running the calibration software, it will give you a report about how accurate your monitor's color is and how much of the sRGB and/or AdobeRGB gamut it can display, and your graphics card / GPU will load those profile settings every time your computer starts. I calibrate once a month, but there usually isn't much change, if any. 

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Thank you both, @Matthew TWP and @A Smug Dill, for your consideration and effort in explaining things to me.

 

Similar to the process of sound production, recording, & reproduction, it seems that color accuracy & matching is far from a straight-forward problem. I just took a look at the Amazon reviews for the current generation Datacolor Spyder and a competitor, the X-Rite. The reviews rated most 'helpful' for those two devices lead me to think that there's likely not yet a good consumer-grade solution. I've wondered if there might be a good way to use software to help a viewer 'eyeball' things to match a display output with what they see on a color card but, as @A Smug Dill points out, given the controls on the many displays I've owned and/or used over the years, the limitations seem overly considerable (not to mention device driver limitations, which I really no nothing about, but I imagine must be considerable as well).

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4 hours ago, PithyProlix said:

The reviews rated most 'helpful' for those two devices lead me to think that there's likely not yet a good consumer-grade solution.

 

A “consumer-grade” — which I take it as available and affordable to the average consumer, but should not be assumed will sell well based on the premium for which only the keenest among them would gladly pay over the average product in the market — solution for accurate colour reproduction would probably start with (never mind what the user already has on hand and spent money acquiring) buying a new display device, of which the major selling point is the display technology and granular control in adjustments, but probably lacking some of the other headline features or bells-and-whistles that attract the mid-range consumer who wants to buy something with lots of ‘cool’ or novel stuff to offer, at least on paper.

 

Furthermore, since you talked generically about “the viewer's display”, the last thing I would want is to approach the answer in a way that excludes iPads, mobile phone handsets, etc. that I'm sure thousands of readers and members of fountain pen hobbyists forums would be using to consume ink reviews and similar published content. If you're using an iPad, how are you going to adjust the colours? I'd think the answer is: you can't, so you don't. Even when talking about the individual “viewer”, taking myself as an example, I use an old MacBook Pro (which of course has a built-in screen) with an external monitor connected for an extended desktop, an iPad Air, a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and a Huawei mobile phone handset. Out of those five of my display devices, only one of them lends itself to adjustment of how the hardware will render the display signal, as far as I'm aware. So, when I consider “the viewer's display”, in the vast majority of my own cases the answer would be no, it can't be done, irrespective of aids such as Datacolor Spyder and X-Rite in the market.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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2 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

A “consumer-grade” — which I take it as available and affordable to the average consumer, but should not be assumed will sell well based on the premium for which only the keenest among them would gladly pay over the average product in the market — to solution for accurate colour reproduction would probably start with (never mind what the user already has on hand and spent money acquiring) buying a new display device, of which the major selling point is the display technology and granular control in adjustments, but probably lacking some of the other headline features or bells-and-whistles that attract the mid-range consumer who wants to buy something with lots of ‘cool’ or novel stuff to offer, at least on paper.

 

Furthermore, since you talked generically about “the viewer's display”, the last thing I would want is to approach the answer in a way that excludes iPads, mobile phone handsets, etc. that I'm sure thousands of readers and members of fountain pen hobbyists forums would be using to consume ink reviews and similar published content. If you're using an iPad, how are you going to adjust the colours? I'd think the answer is: you can't, so you don't. Even when talking about the individual “viewer”, taking myself as an example, I use an old MacBook Pro (which of course has a built-in screen) with an external monitor connected for an extended desktop, an iPad Air, a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and a Huawei mobile phone handset. Out of those five of my display devices, only one of them lends itself to adjustment of how the hardware will render the display signal, as far as I'm aware. So, when I consider “the viewer's display”, in the vast majority of my own cases the answer would be no, it can't be done, irrespective of aids such as Datacolor Spyder and X-Rite in the market.

 

All points well-taken. There would seem to be an opportunity for better software control through graphics cards'/chips' drivers, assuming the hardware allows it, but I've never done any development that interfaces device drivers (at least anything that's much more than superficial), so I don't know anything about it and I'm just making a guess. Whether or not the demand for such control is (or will be) there is another question.

My pens for sale: https://www.facebook.com/jaiyen.pens  

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, what did Colorverse say?

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Colorverse has not responded to an inquiry on their website, nor on a message on Instagram. I’m a little bit surprised at the lack of response. 

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