How do I tell what color the item in a photo actually is?
I'm kind of embarrassed to be asking this, since it seems like something I should've figured out by now or else learned to deal with: sometimes, after receiving an item I've bought online (new or secondhand--more often the latter), it'll be a noticeably different color than it was in the seller's photos.
I know this is, to some degree, inevitable, due to the nature of photography, differences in lighting, photographic skill, etc., and I'm not suggesting any ill intent on the seller's part, but sometimes the difference between photo and reality is severe enough for me to think that I must be missing something. Am I? Is there some adjustment (mental or otherwise) I could be making to better sense how the item really looks, or at least to tell that there's some distortion going on and that I ought to disregard the listing?
10 Replies
you aren't missing anything
it comes down to the lighting the seller took the photo in, their camera settings, any filtering or post effects they did, and your monitor's colorbalance
best you can do is make sure your monitor's color balance is accurate, but sometimes the photos just suck
any examples would help here
On ebay, you can return an item if it's not accurate. I've done it before and returned a light blue shirt then was actually very dark blue.
in my experience, the color accuracy on eBay photos is often hilariously bad.
We need to require that everyone include one of these in their photos.
That's what I was afraid of, but just wanted to be sure. Thanks
In the most recent case, I bought a pair of chinos expecting them to be tan (like #D2B48C), but they're really more taupe (like #A59A8D)--which isn't crazy, but it isn't what I was looking for
Oh, I was expecting something a lot worse. Something like that wouldn't even register for me lol
Unless you're looking for a specific color for a specific reason, you just gotta roll with the punches and color differences
Yeah :okee:
It’s completely impossible. Colors are not real.