Why is color matching so difficult?

[fibrewire]

I don't really know about visually matching colors, but couldn't someone fire up Pac-Man in MAME and do a screen grab? Grab the color value from whatever there and match it to Altirra? Then it will look the same regardless of what machine or monitor a person uses.

 

The only people that have a difficult job of color matching would be the guy that makes MAME for a particular game, and the guy that makes Altirra.

 

What am i missing?

[+Stephen]

Missing the fact that the Atari can only produce a specific 256 colors, and if things were simply matched to arcade counterparts, it would not be a proper Atari palette.

[fibrewire]

correct, but couldn't I create a color swatch from a screen grab of MAME? then use G2F to estimate the colors?

[kenfused]

Missing the fact that the Atari can only produce a specific 256 colors, and if things were simply matched to arcade counterparts, it would not be a proper Atari palette.

And in most modes only 128 colors.

And the lighter the color, the less saturated the color (dark colors are really saturated, and lighter brightness have less color saturation).

Many early arcade games had a limited number of colors but they were able to be tuned to the exact color they wanted.

[emkay]

correct, but couldn't I create a color swatch from a screen grab of MAME? then use G2F to estimate the colors?

 

Have you ever been in a store, buying a TV set?

Not to talk about the "NTSC" flaws, even with PAL TVs you found several colour variations. Today limited Displays vary on the pre setting of the developer's taste.

And, not to forget that people sometimes were not able to set the colour/contrast/brightness correct.

As it seems, we have 3 different types of colour generation.

-The original NTSC Ataris (adjustable though/different from machine to machine.... you know, Never The Same Colour)

-The PAL XL

-The PAL XE

 

To find a good setting I try to make pictures fitting to "Jakub" and "Laoo" most.

[José Pereira]

And then... Which is the best match for PAL, 'Laoo' or 'Jakub'?

 

LAOO vs JAKUB:

Edited December 16, 2011 by José Pereira