[derekleffew]

Originally Posted by icewolf08

...The best thing to do is sit down in a dark theatre, and mix colors and write down the vales. Helps if you have some scrollers so that you can reference a bunch of different colors without getting up to change gels. Color mixing is and art.

icewolf08 is absolutely correct. No chart will ever be 100% correct, even the ones in the consoles that have gel pickers.

Attached is a chart, courtesy of Morpheus Lights, for the ColorFader, which was the first three-string scroller, intended for use on incandescent fixtures.


At a minimum, one should immediately create color palettes for the seven basic colors (WHT, CYN, MAG, YEL, RED, GRN, CGO) as soon as one sits down at a console, if the console does not auto-generate them. Other colors needed will depend on the show and preference of the designer.

Copied from Christian Choi's Programming Tutorials:
The first color mixing colors that I’ll record in my color palette are the ones that are easiest to mix, the full primaries and secondary colors. To do this, I’ll select my color mixing fixtures and the first color I’ll record is full unadulterated magenta. I’ll record this color in the top right button of my screen. From there, I’ll roll in the cyan leaf in addition to the magenta. Any guesses which color this might mix? If you said congo you were correct. I’ll record the congo just under the magenta. Next I’ll completely roll out the magenta leaf and leave only the cyan leaf to be recorded. I’ll record cyan under the congo. Now I’ll add the yellow on top of the cyan which will mix a green. I’ll record the green just under the Cyan. If I take out the cyan leaf, I’ll leave only the yellow to be recorded under the green. This leaves me with just one more combination to record, which would be yellow plus magenta. This would mix a fire red. If you take a look at figure 8 you can see how the colors line up on the right side. From top to bottom wee have magenta, congo, cyan, green, yellow, and fire. To the left of these colors I’ll create about 5 lighter shades of each hue. When you combine 2 leafs such as cyan and yellow to mix a green, if you take the cyan out about 40% you will yield more of a yellow green or chartreuse. Instead, if you take out the yellow leaf 40% you will yield a blue green or turquoise. This demonstrates that with every combination you can have 2 possible hues of that color. When I organize my color palette, I’ll separate these 2 hues into 2 areas of the same row of palettes.

I’ll organize my color-mixing colors from darkest to lightest going left. It’s important that whatever organizational technique you come up with, you group similar shades of color together from darkest to lightest. When a designer asks for a color they rarely ask for it be the number of your palette, instead they’ll say "give me a blue-green". It’s then up to you to supply them with a blue-green. If they want a different blue-green, they’ll usually give you some indication as to whether they want a more or less saturated one or they’ll simply say "lighter" or "darker" and sometimes "bluer" or "greener". If your colors are organized chromatically and from darkest to lightest, it will be easy for you to keep up and finally produce the exact color the designer is looking for.