A Matter of Color

By Michael Benolkin

Introduction

I’ve been fascinated with the varying degree of angst from various modeling circles over the accuracy of aircraft colors. This is echoed to a lesser degree to ship modelers, and even less so to other subject areas. Color accuracy is important to most modelers, but it is almost an obsession among aircraft modelers.

There are a number of great online resources for helping modelers recreate desired colors by mixing different ‘stock’ colors. For me, this is good information, but I prefer a simpler approach – let a paint company do the mixing so I can count on the same exact color coming out of my airbrush at every application.

You may recall that five years ago, we put together a set of paint charts that grew over time to help modelers find color-matched paints for many different applications. These resources continued to grow as readers wanted to see their favorite paint lines added to the charts. Those paint tables finally grew beyond usability and the time came to do some ‘re-engineering’.

Federal Standard 595

Welcome to Cybermodeler Online’s re-engineered color references. We started off by digitizing the color paint chips from FS 595b including Change 1. We will update these tables to include the 39 colors that will be added into the new FS 595c standard when that resource is available.

You’ll notice that we’ve taken a different view of these paint chips. Rather than running through all of the gloss, then semi-gloss, then finally matte (flat) colors in FS 595b numerical order, we’ve shown them in color order (sorted by the last four digits of the FS number) so you can see the differences in relative appearance of the same color using gloss, semi-gloss (satin), and flat (lusterless/matte) finishes.

Next, we have color tables separated by acrylic and enamel colors for the available FS 595 colors. Hobby paint manufacturers do not usually release the same colors with different finishes, so if your instructions call for a gloss green of a certain color and you cannot find that paint, these charts will show you if that the color is available as a matte color or satin finish instead. These charts will also show you the same colors available from other manufacturers just to help the search along. You'll also note that we've annotated some colors if they're a close, but not exact match (see the annotation key at the bottom of the tables).

Reichsausschuß für Lieferbedingungen (RAL)

Next, we've provided a table of digitized color equivalents for each of the RAL colors. Like the 595 color chips, these provide you with the relative appearance and distinction between different color shades. And like the 595 tables, we've provided acrylic and enamel tables containing the available paints that match or are close matches to the RAL colors.

Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM)

During World War II, the German Air Ministry created a standard set of colors and camouflage patterns that were to be applied to Luftwaffe aircraft. These colors were no-doubt standardized, but who knows if a copy of that standard survived the war. A number of researchers have researched and forensically recreated the standards, though some of the forensic evidence is sometimes contradictory. Eagle Editions has graciously granted Cybermodeler Online permission to publish their color chips. These will be contrasted against digital representations of the earlier Monogram standard used by the various paint manufacturers over the years to create their color-matched RLM paints.

What is the difference between a digitized paint chip and a digital representation? If you look at a digitized paint chip using an image tool, you will see the image made up of a variety of pixels of differing color values to recreate the visual presentation of a single color. A digital representation differs in that all of the pixels in the image are the exact same color. The digital representations recreate the appearance of the color (within certain limitations) without violating copyrights.

Color Accuracy

Whether we are presenting digitized color chips or digitized representations, these colors are not suitable for color-matching or any detailed analysis. Unless you have a Macintosh (and I don't), the color coming from the scanner is different from what is displayed on the monitor and that is different than what comes out of the printer. What's more, the color displayed on my monitor is different than yours. You've been to the store to see televisions and computer monitors, you can see the same images or broadcasts, but each one has a different color quality and/or calibration.

These pages are provided to show you the relative differences in appearance between colors to help you visualize the contrast of different color schemes applied to different aircraft, ships, and combat vehicles.