Category:Color Charts

This information was originally hosted on www.simmerspaintshop.com, it is now provided on the FSDeveloper wiki as reference for aircraft painters. Please see the text below for more details on where the information comes from and who the copyright holders are.

In these pages you can find various color charts that might be helpfull for skinning. I do not claim that these charts are perfect, but they come close to the real colors. A few factors have influence on the colors you see. First of all, many colors from different countries are translated to colors in the American FS 595b chart. Often this will not be a perfect match, but a color that comes close. The colors in the Federal Standard list are presented as the colors the way they appear on a bright day at noon. So, at any other time or with any other light circumstances, the color may appear different! Then the colors are translated to RGB colors. Monitors mix the colors red, green and blue to present any color to you. Therefore these colors are also called the basic colors, since you can mix any color out of these three. Also this translation is not perfect. Software is used to calculate those RGB values. Also the calibration of your monitor has a big influence on the way the colors are presented. One person has likes brighter settings for his monitor than another. And finally also the flightsimulator has effect on the colors. The 3D engine uses light effects and also simulates various lighting effects. So, take these notes into account when you use colors for skinning.

Where possible I have tried (and am still trying) to calculate the RGB and HEX values as directly from the source as possible. This because the FS595 color system only known little over 600 colors. Knowing this you can imagine that many colors won't fit. A very good example are the Russian colors. Look at them and then look up the FS color I've mentioned there. Very often the color is far off. Still I mention the FS595b color as a reference, since it still is a common system to translate colors.

While converting the colors, I've used colorchips I have used from books as a guide to compare if the color matches. Here is a list of how I translated the colors:

• Russian colors: Translated from Munsell values as listed in the book "Soviet Airforce Fighter Colors 1941 - 1945" by Erik Pilawskii
• Dutch colors: Mostly based on information in the book"De geschiedenis van Camouflage en Kentekens op de vliegtuigen van de Nederlandse Strijdkrachten" by J.H.N. Greuter
• RLM colors: First through the German RAL system based on the comparisation list from the book "Paint-shop handbook (1944)" For other colors the closest match to the paintchips given in the book "Luftwaffe Colours 1935-1945" by Michael Ullmann. I've also added RLM colors that are mentioned on the Internet like RLM69 Sandgelb, though the previous mentioned book mentiones a Dunkelgrün as RLM69. This as reference for people who are looking for that specific color
• For most RAF colors I used RGB values that come as close as possible to the British Standards colorchips I have. Untill now I have not found a good translation from BS to RGB without using FS595b
• In all other cases the translation when through FS595b values as common accepted and published by various sources, since I don't have better information yet.

Below a short explaination of the FS 595b color chart. The First digit represent the level of sheen.

• 1 = gloss
• 2 = semigloss
• 3 = matt

The second digit represents the color range the color belongs to.

• 0 = brown
• 1 = red
• 2 = orange
• 3 = yellow
• 4 = green
• 5 = blue
• 6 = grey
• 7 = other (white, black, violet, metallic)
• 8 = fluorescent

The remaining figures (third to fifth) combined into a number indicate the intensity. Lower value indicates a darker color, higher value - a lighter color, with no other significance. The numbers have been assigned with gaps to allow addition of new colours.

FS.595 is a color collection, not a complete color system, an this has the following implications:

• The existence of a color chip 3xxxx in the FS binder doesn't imply that there is a color chip for 1xxxx. However,  references to such "virtual" chips built on the principle "same color, but different sheen" is a widespread practice in model-related literature.
    
• The FS in not extensible, i.e. it does not allow to derive new colors form the existing ones. Thus, if you compare i.e. RLM colors to FS codes, you can only refer to the nearest existing FS color, which most often isn't a perfect match. In practice, the FS set is extensive enough to find a good-enough match for almost any color.