Orlo-Smith’s colour map and triangle

I present below my version of Orlo-Smith’s famous colour map for the 1d Reds, followed by a version of the map converted into a colour triangle, as used in colour theory.

Download and print the complete file with graph and table :

The Orlo-Smith KGV 1d Colour Map.

The colour map arranges the 1d Red shades along two axes – a colour axis running from cerise on the left through rose red to scarlet and scarlet vermilion on the right, and a brightness axis running from pale at the top to deep (or dark – this axis seems to serve two purposes in the O.-S. scheme) at the bottom. In my version I present the map as a table which basically follows the traditional O-S scheme (with some variation), but where the basic shade groups in the various cells are labelled with the Gibbons description of the shade (as opposed to Orlo-Smith’s) in bold type, with each cell then listing the individual shades under their traditional G numbers and Orlo-Smith shade descriptions.

Bright shades are shown in italics, while dull shades are underlined.

The Salmon shades are shown separately as usual, but you will also see that I have added an extra columns for the various Orange Red and Brownish Red shades. In the original Orlo-Smith scheme, these shades also appeared separately, below the Deep Scarlets (i.e, in O.S. terms they were basically deep dull Scarlets, or deep reddish Salmons).

* Rose Carmine Red here is Rose Red with some Carmine. Rosy Red is between S.G. Red and Rose Red.

** In Orlo-Smith’s original colour map “Red” is defined as “Signal Red” (Post-Office Red), a bright shade between Gibbons Scarlet and Rose Red. However, most G16’s are rather duller and somewhat redder than this.

^ Rose Carmine here is a shade between Carmine and Bright Rose – Carmine Rose is similar but somewhat bluer in shade. Rose here is a medium shade, deeper than in the SG Colour Guide, and closer to the Bright Rose of the Colour Key.

^^ Rosine Carmine is Carmine plus some Rosine – Carmine Rosine is Rosine plus some Carmine.

# Carmine Scarlet here is a Dark Scarlet shade between Carmine Red and Scarlet (as Carmine Vermilion in the Colour Key).

The KGV 1d Red Colour Triangle.

Colour Theory.

The problem with the traditional Orlo-Smith diagram is that it tries to present all the different colour shades along the one (horizontal) axis. To understand the difficulties which this causes we need to understand basic colour theory.

In terms of shade, colour is actually three-dimensional; to the eye there are three basic colours, red, green and blue*, and the actual hue (“chroma”) of any given shade is determined by the relative strengths of these three basic colours in the shade. Some shades are mixtures of two basic colours only – yellow and orange are mixtures of red and green, cyan is green plus blue, magenta and purple are blue plus red, and of course there many other intermediate (two colour) shades. Most real world shades however are mixtures of all three basic colours. O-S “Rose Red” for example is basically pure red plus roughly equal amounts of blue and green (with a bit more blue than green). Increasing the amount of blue in Rose Red produces the Carmine Rosines and Carmines, while increasing the amount of green produces the Orange Reds.

Now, the Orlo Smith map uses a one dimensional colour axis, running (in O-S terms) from Carmine Pink (a blueish red) on the left to Scarlet Vermilion (pure red plus some green) on the right. The vertical axis is not shade but depth of colour. You can see the problem – there is no room on the horizontal axis for all the various three colour “mixed” shades, so they are usually accommodated as deeper or darker versions of other more basic shades (e.g, Carmine is grouped with Rose Red), or dealt with separately (like the Salmons and Brownish Reds).

* These are emitted colours, as seen by the eye – printed or painted colours are made by mixing red, yellow and blue primary colours.

The Colour Triangle.

Thus the Orlo-Smith approach gets rather complicated – it really needs extra columns for the Carmines, Salmons and Brownish Reds, to say nothing of the various sub-shades like Carmine Rosine and Rosine Carmine. So, rather than expanding the Orlo-Smith diagram forever, in the table below I arrange the various shades in a two dimensional colour table, corresponding (more or less) to the colour maps used in colour theory.

In this table there are two colour axes, one running from “pure” red (Signal Red in standards jargon, roughly, S.G. Carmine Scarlet) at the bottom right to Cerise (red plus some blue) on the left, and the other from pure red at the bottom up to Vermilion (red plus some green, in effect a yellowish red) at the top. As before, the basic shades in each cell are labelled with their Gibbons shade names in bold.

In this scheme all the main 1d Red shades, whether two-colour or three-colour, fit into a rough triangle (backgrounded in white) defined by these two axes , and I think this gives much better idea of how the various shades fit together than does the O-S map. Note that in my scheme I group the pale, deep and pink versions of the same shade all together, which is of course not really in accord with strict colour theory (the pinks include extra white, i.e, significant amounts red, blue & green, and hence should really be top left, towards white). Also, some shades have been omitted for reasons of space, and the very deep shades are shown separately, outside the main triangle and backgrounded in grey.

(Note also that in the real world actual pigments are never pure shades – thus real Vermilion is not just red plus green – it will actually include a small amount of blue. But a small amount of blue plus equal small amounts of red and green effectively makes a weak white (i.e, grey) so the extra green has the effect of weakening the colour by adding a little grey to the shade. Similarly, the Rose and Cerise shades will include some green. Thus even the shades shown here on the axes of the colour triangle will also normally look somewhat duller in reality than their theoretical pure two-colour equivalents).

You can verify all this with the colour palettes and maps on your computer, which generates colours using red, green and blue phosphors or leds, but note that the “pure” colours on the computer screen may not correspond exactly to the basic hues of colour theory – for example on the screen the “pure red” (the red emitter alone) may be anything from scarlet to vermilion, depending on which particular emitter the manufacturer has used.

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