The Ridgway Book On Line

I realize that using a PC is not the best way to see colors and shades, but this should prove useful.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/630...htm#pigments

Wonderful and thanks for this.

The problem(s) with colors has always been not only what color it is on a color chart, but what do other people call that color? If the catalogue says a stamp is "blaze red," and my chart has no blaze red, but it calls that exact color "fire engine red," which is it? Are they two names for the same color? Or not?
[I'm just making these color names up!]

Even if we could all settle on a very large group of standard colors, including nearly all shades of those colors, what we each call them never seems to be standard. Finding out whether its cerulean blue or baby blue or sunny blue or medium blue is good, but what if the catalogue makers call that very same shade "French blue"? Then I'm totally lost. What the heck is French blue? Knowing the catalogue's name for a color doesn't help me much because of this. Matching a stamp's color to a color chart often doesn't work because what the color chart calls that color isn't the same as what the catalogue editors call that color.

I suppose catalogue makers could include little color 'chips' next to each stamp whose color matters? I don't think any of them do that -- and maybe printing technology doesn't do that well. Until we manage to standardize names of colors -- which is what color charts attempt to do -- we're going to have this problem. And I'm pretty much sure we aren't ever going to be able to standardize the names of colors.

Nevertheless, my rods and cones thank you for this wonderful resource.

This book has been the standard for shades for many decades. My understanding is that if a shade is not here it is probably not a genuine shade, but has been affected by something. But that might be incorrect.

of course it doesn't have Lake, my standard for weird color names used by Scott

There is Indian Lake.

And Burnt lake. And probably others.

I have never understood why Lake is a red color. It should be called Sea, then it would make sense.

Michel has tried to regularize color designations in their color swatch publication, which they explain in several languages. Here it is in English. The colors are only printed on the German page so I have included that too. All that said, their color swatch book is not too useful. And expensive.

Lake as a color name is very old,it goes back to Medieval Latin as well as Persian and Arabic.

The lake color dye was first developed in the middle ages in India as a natural dye with a reddish hue and the name comes from the lac bug whose hard body shell was ground up to produce the dye.
Edit to add: The development of the lake dye may have come earlier than the middle ages, perhaps much earlier. And the dye may come from a secretion from the bug, not the shell. The lac bug also is part of the derivation of the words "shellac" and "lacquer".

Yes, colors on a PC can be difficult, but at least there you have the option to get a good setup (good monitor, color calibration with hardware tool). I have good experience with that in comparison to online photos which are made in an equally good setting.

But one book that probably all US stamp collectors would like to own is:
White's Encyclopedia of the Colors of United States Postage Stamps

This would be nice to see online, because there you have the real stamps in direct comparison. Shouldn't there be a well aged example in some library that could be made ready for online access, archive.org etc?

and about the Michel colors, on this site they have entered a lot with computer values: (some say "Überprüft" they are probably checked either by eye or by equipment)
https://www.stampsx.com/ratgeber/farben_zeigen.php

(I don't know anything about how they made it and if it is really useful for all stamps and colors, but for some German stamps I saw the colors being quite correct)

Does the PF use color charts/published color guides or actual stamps as references when determine colors for opinions?

Both.

It is useful to remember that the Ridgway book was to be used by ornithologists to describe the color of birds to someone who has not seen the actual bird. The chips in all of the books were supposedly cut from one large sheet and pasted in the books in order to have a uniformity of color and so that one book's chips would be the same as another books. The one that philatelists use is actually a second edition. I own a previous version from the 1880s in addition to the second 1912 edition that is commonly used by philatelists.

Unfortunately, the passage of time has affected some of the chips due to exposure to light and some chemical interaction with the atmosphere. In some cases the glue used to attach the chips has affected the color. It is not a perfect system.

Ashbrook and Elliot Perry used it to identify shades of stamps to each other. The color names in the Ridgway books have been adopted by philatelists. It is most useful when an earlier philatelist has attempted identify shades. Brookman has a long list of approximations for Scott 1 and Bert Christian attempted to identify shades of the 1¢ 1861.

For me I use the book to try to commune with the "ancients"

I happen to know that the copy at the PF (kept closed in the safe where it will not be affected by light) was a gift from Elliot Perry.

I am very interested in color in stamps. I have R.H. White's 3-volume encyclopedia with color chips, his book color in philately, and Scott's Specialized Color Guide for United States Stamps, plus pantone swatches and US Federal Standard color swatches. . .I've found none of them to be particularly useful. Actual reference stamps are what is useful in identifying colors.