Talk:Amber (color)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is supported by the Color WikiProject. This project provides a central approach to Color-related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.
Stub	This article has been rated as stub-Class on the quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as mid-importance on the importance scale.
Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

Why is there an entire section in here devoted to "Symbolism" that says that amber is "symbolic" of "energy"? It makes no sense whatsoever. --Dreadpiratetif 22:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

As in the Selective Yellow article, the described approximation technique has yielded a color that is visually too red and insufficiently yellow. Here's a set of specs for a visual impression that seems more closely to match the colour of light produced by ECE-amber lighting devices:

ECE Amber (desaturated approximation)
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#F5D700
RGBB	(r, g, b)	(245, 215, 0)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(37°, 255%, 245%)
Source		[Unsourced]
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Repeating my comment from the discussion page for Selective Yellow, I think it is more appropriate to approximate the colour of the light (as it would appear when projected on e.g. a white surface) rather than trying to describe the colour of whatever filter is used to attain that colour (e.g. headlamp lens or filter balloon, reflector coating, etc.), for the appearance of such optical elements is very widely variable depending on the filtration technique used and the filter's placement within the optical system.

There should probably be reference to old ECE Amber being supplanted by new ECE Yellow, a change which was made primarily to accommodate and facilitate the transition to LED signalling devices. Scheinwerfermann 00:05, 17 December 2005 (EST)

As per my comment there, the colour specification is for the colour of the light. By my reading of the UNECE specs, the definition of amber was expanded in the last couple of years – the article shows the current one & you'll see the old one in the history. I assumed that this change was made to accommodate LEDs. Is there a separate "ECE Yellow" rather than just the new amber definition? That swatch just looks yellow to me, btw - the one on the article looks far more like an indicator on my display. I'd suggest a photo, like selective yellow. --KJBracey 11:08, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, you're right regarding ECE "Amber" vs. "Yellow". The English-language ECE Regulations still refer to "Amber" despite that colour's recent expansion to accommodate LED and other non-filament light sources. What I was thinking of was France's objection a couple of years ago to the use of "Ambre" in the French-language ECE Regulations. They wanted it changed to "Jaune Auto" ("Automotive Yellow") and while I haven't checked lately, I think they probably got their wish. There is an ECE "Fog Lamp Yellow" which is a somewhat more permissive variant of ECE Selective Yellow. Scheinwerfermann 12:34, 11 January 2006 (EST)

Whoops, looks like I was right about the colour specs being changed under ECE Regs; I just garburated the description of what happened. Old ECE Amber was defined as:

limit towards red: y ≥ 0.398

limit towards green: y ≤ 0.429

limit towards white: z ≤ 0.007

But, as of Rev3 Am1 & Am2 of Reg 6, and Rev4 of Reg 37, Amber has been redefined thus:

limit towards green: y ≤ x - 0.120

limit towards red: y ≥ 0.390

limit towards white: y ≥ 0.790 - 0.670 x

This is identical to the SAE "Yellow" spec. I am not too pleased at this loosening of the specification, but they didn't ask for my vote. Scheinwerfermann 17:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)