Fun with color palettes!

[lisa c]

Morning again, Dave - got a question. Did you sample the Sea of Cortez pearls as well as the shell, and do they both have the exact same pallette?

And I forgot to say " Congrats!", you Pearly Savants! Applause!

 

[pattye]

View attachment 25852

Though not part of the quiz, these natural pearls from P-G contributor lolperle of his P. maculata merits mention.

WOW!!!! Almost missed these, love them!!

 

[pattye]

Sea of Cortez pearls

Sea of Cortez pearls

Ok, so this morning I played with a photo of my S of C pearls. Tried to cover and crop out all the white background. I don't have the exact program Dave does, but it was fun to see~

The original pic,


Cropped pic with exposure corrected a bit,


Pixilated pic.

 

[kiwipaul]

Hi Dave, thanks for this fascinating technique.

I've tried it on a vintage Mikimoto brooch, probably circa 1960's to 1970's.
Interesting how Mikimoto colors have changed over the years.
The vintage Mikis certainly have more color than their current fashion for very white pearls.

Photoshop 7 is my graphics program but it doesn't seem to have a function to sort the colors in the palette.
Noticeable how it has picked up the greens, which I hadn't seen.



So I downloaded GIMP, here's the result:



Will be interested in your comments, and how the result compares with the graphics program you're using.

If you want to try running the files through your program, here's a link:

http://www.theholygrail.com/images/miki-palette.jpg

 

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

Ok, so this morning I played with a photo of my S of C pearls. Tried to cover and crop out all the white background. I don't have the exact program Dave does, but it was fun to see~

This is what I got from your image. Although the pearls are lighter than the mosaic created from the shell, it's still quite colorful!

 

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

Hi Dave, thanks for this fascinating technique.

I've tried it on a vintage Mikimoto brooch, probably circa 1960's to 1970's.
Interesting how Mikimoto colors have changed over the years.
The vintage Mikis certainly have more color than their current fashion for very white pearls.

Photoshop 7 is my graphics program but it doesn't seem to have a function to sort the colors in the palette.
Noticeable how it has picked up the greens, which I hadn't seen.

Terrific job on these!

The first image from Photoshop seems to be "palette order", which are color pixels are shown from greatest to least frequency.

The image from GIMP appears to list by source luminescence. Even though they are slightly different layouts, you can see an overall similarity.

Also, green overtones (however slight) in most akoyas is commonplace. You did well to capture it.

This is what I got:

 

[kiwipaul]

Thanks Dave, which graphics program are you using?

 

[pattye]

Thank you so much, Dave! I didn't do a great job picking up all the rose and lavender tones, (They are not the top grade most colorful S of C pearls) still, totally fascinating to analyze this way!!

Thanks much for your pearly contribution, Paul!

 

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

Thanks Dave, which graphics program are you using?

Paint Shop Pro 5

It's a few years old, but I like it because it loads instantly. I don't like waiting forever for a program to load up just to view a single image.

 

[Caitlin]

Thank you for a really fun exercise.

 

[Amrita]

Thanks Dave - I truly enjoyed this, even though I did not get all of them right. One thing is for sure from now on: whenever I look at pearls, I will be visualising their color palettes...thanks for bringing this dimension into our mindsets..

 

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

Let's try these in side by side profiles.



Two SoC and a Tahitian.



Chinese FWP, Kasumi, Edison.



kiwipaul's akoyas and my mussels. Interesting match here. In this case, not by species. Knowing my exemplars are natural, this match could suggest no post-harvest treatment of the akoyas. If they were "pinked", like the dyed black akoyas, we'd likely see fewer variations. As is the case with the Miki's, which were almost assuredly bleached.

 

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

Post-harvest treated pearls.

 

[lisa c]

What you're doing and posting for us - marvelous!

For the first row pallette, left to right - Sea of Cortez shell, Sea of Cortez pearls, then Tahitian, correct?

 

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

What you're doing and posting for us - marvelous!

For the first row pallette, left to right - Sea of Cortez shell, Sea of Cortez pearls, then Tahitian, correct?

Yes, correct

 

[lisa c]

Thanks Dave. Yes, I remembered the turquoise in the shell. That's one glorious shell...

 

[kiwipaul]

Hi Dave, very interesting outcome on the vintage Mikis.

I wonder if you'd care to run your magic over the necklaces and enhancers in my "Show us your Mikimotos" thread here: https://www.pearl-guide.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8158

The source pics are on the following links:

www.gojobs.co.nz/pics/Show1a.jpg
www.gojobs.co.nz/pics/Show2a.jpg
www.gojobs.co.nz/pics/Mikimoto_Choker1.jpg
www.gojobs.co.nz/pics/Mikimoto_Choker2.jpg

I suspect we'll see that Mikimoto were not treating / bleaching their pearls at that time.
I think that in the 50's to 60's the fashion was for creamy pearls with slightly greenish overtones.
Then in the 70's to 80's fashion moved to whiter pearls with pink overtones.
Mikimoto were probably able to achieve these colors by selection, and control of the growth period.

Now bright white is the fashion and presumably they're treating / bleaching them.

However as has been pointed out previously the current bright white doesn't suit all skin tones, and the vintage cultured pearls can suit some people much better.

The other thing I'd love to see is a comparison of color palettes of vintage Mikis against a string of quality Naturals.
Here's links to hi-res pics of our naturals if you're interested in using those:

www.gojobs.co.nz/images/natural1.jpg
www.gojobs.co.nz/images/natural2.jpg

 

[lisa c]

Could we please 'sticky' this thread? For those of us with memory (ahem) 'moments'?

Kiwi, what would you think of clumping your naturals together and taking another photo? so Dave could get more samples without having to worry about the shadows and the background? He makes a mosaic/sampling, so nothing would be lost.

I bet this becomes an adjunct section to labs (gleeful prediction). This could be a budding career...

 

[lisa c]

"Knowing my exemplars are natural, this match could suggest no post-harvest treatment of the akoyas. If they were "pinked", like the dyed black akoyas, we'd likely see fewer variations. "

Wouldn't another possibility be as many variations, but a color shift - toward a more pink version of the same colors? You know, similar to the effects you get when you 'cool' or 'warm' the tint of a photo in computer editing.

 

[kiwipaul]

Hi Lisa, yes I'll clump together the naturals, and also the different mikis, to make the original composites easier.

However they're in the secure facility, so I'll have to go and get them first.