Talk:Indigo/Archive 1

Should this be in British English?

Issac newton found the colour and he was a Brit so should this be written in BE and not AM? User:Edsteroo

Or perhaps in 17-century English, since Newton found it before the colonies split off? Dicklyon (talk) 00:44, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

That's okay, the ISS was built with mainly American dollars by Americans, with virtually no contribution by the Brits (or any Commonwealth country - yes, the Canadians built the little arm thingy, but that's hardly a significant fraction of the total cost or construction effort), yet the Wiki article on the ISS is written in UK English.

Someone must sure like the picture of indigo dye...

because it appears twice in this article. The second occurance states: "At right is shown the actual color of indigo dye." Of course, this may or may not be true depending on how accurate the original photo was, how accurate the conversion to digital format was, how accurate the rendering by the monitor is, etc., etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.158.61.141 (talk) 18:32, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Picture

What is that a picture of? It looks like a blue lump of concreate tried in white staw. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.79.180.109 (talk) 16:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I suppose the picture is tied to the INDIGO trade so some history of that in America, for example, in the 1700's would be helpful. Refer to Lawrence Hill's historical fiction, THE BOOK OF NEGROES, (USA title is Someone Knows My Name). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.50.6.42 (talk) 23:36, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Colors Corrected on Page

No worries now!

Edit: The Pink swatch is displaying as #ff0001 for me, which is most definitely red. It should be #f0f (as the simplest) or other shades for a "truer" pink, such as #ff69b4 or #f653a6. ~ Ashley

Wrong Color

Indigo is not dark purple as the article shows. It's more bluish, and that is not a matter of perception either. Take a look at all the other indigo stuff on the web, including google images. Books are another good source. Check it out.

The dark purple thing is wrong and bad reference. I made a comment about this on simple english wiki. - Steve

NOTICE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Indigo_plant_extract_sample.jpg

Rounding for HSV values

• HSV was:

   * H: 275
   * S: 100
   * V: 51 

now

HSV    (h, s, v)    =  (274, 100, 50)

Off by 1 :-/ probably I'm rounding differently than the gimp. let's see...

Okay, I fixed the programme, added rounding off properly. Kim Bruning 13:59, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Indigo isn't a color

Indigo is no more a color than any other dye. I suggest that Indigo redirects to Indigo dye, since it really isn't a color. Also, I think it should be removed entirely from the colors footer, since it is not a color. --Ctachme 16:33, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Nah, it's both a color and a dye, but more used as the color. (Many colors are named from dyes, or plants that exhibit the color. How many people know that mauve is the name of a plant?) --Jerzy(t) 16:39, 2005 Feb 8 (UTC)

Of course it's a colour. Jimp 30May05

There are an infinite number of colors. Indigo is one of them. Your box of crayons probably (unless you had the box with only 8 colors) had yellow-orange. Yellow-orange is a color between yellow and orange. We just don't have a good name for it.--RLent 20:56, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is a name for that color; amber. Georgia guy 22:47, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Indigo

Does anyone have any opinions on whether indigo is a real spectral color?? Studying the history of the color article, I got that indigo was removed from the color spectrum and the wavelengths. Does anyone have any opinions?? 66.32.255.91 15:17, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• "Real spectral color" is a loaded expression.
  • Yes, there is a wavelength that stimulates the human eye in a way indistinguishable to the brain from the way that indigo dye's characteristic organic compound (or mix of compounds?) does.
  • However, much like red or green, all humans except those (e.g. painters) who have in effect nurtured an obsession with color use "indigo" to refer to a range of wavelengths, and in that sense the question asks whether the endpoints of that range are the real dividing points between colors. The simple answer is that there are no real dividing points.

Real answers are much more complicated. There is very strong evidence, from comparing color vocabularies of (non-constructed) languages, that each culture (i suspect we are really talking about those that haven't yet gotten sophisticated at developing synthetic dyes) has an implicit agreement about how many colors there are, expressesd in its vocabulary of colors. (WP editors are likely to recall a conlang (whose name i shan't mention) that has a single word spanning both blue and green.) That color vocabs should differ is not too earth-shaking, IMO. (For anyone surprised by this, i offer the information that the German words for "orange" and "violet" come from Arabic and Latin; think about the implications of that.) What is more surprising is the evidence that those vocabs don't seem to be freely chosen, i.e., that at some fundamental and universal brain level, blue and green really are more alike than, say, green and yellow. With, IIRC, the one exception of Russian, all the variations can be explained by assuming that everyone's brain has the same hierarchy of color distinctions, and that a culture in effect determines its language's vocabulary of colors by a single "decision": namely how strong a difference between colors to require before giving those two colors separate names. "Here's a palette of the world's colors, how many do you want to be able to make distinctions between? OK, i just shredded the bottom of your culture's copy of the color palette; here's the top five swatches, just give them each a name and you're good to go. Huh? What other colors are you talking about? There are only five colors as far as you're concerned; the ones i just shredded are really just shades of these 5."

I assume this is discussed somewhere on WP, with some sort of list. If anyone has been there and can give me a link to save my searching, i'd be grateful.

--Jerzy(t) 19:44, 2005 Feb 8 (UTC)

Removed Cyan Reference

I stripped this:

Curiously, he did not choose a more significant color also producible by the indigo plant, the complementary color to red, now called cyan.

because

1. There's nothing curious about it; our article explains it adequately, or nearly so.
2. This sentence is not about established knowledge, but a form of original research, into why he omitted it.

--Jerzy(t) 19:44, 2005 Feb 8 (UTC)
Ah, i read hastily: cyan instead of indigo, so the Seven argument is irrelevant. Do we know anything of the availability of the various dyes in his time? Does my absorption-lines story cast any light [chuckle!] on this? Did he defend his choice in print?? --Jerzy(t) 05:45, 2005 Feb 9 (UTC)

Indigo, here we go-oh (Newton)

I'm confused by the bit that says "He [Newton] named seven colors specifically to link them with the (known) planets, days of the week, notes in the octave, and other lists that had seven items.

An Octave has eight notes.

That would seem to be the case, based on the name octave, but there are actually only seven "kinds" of notes. Consider the C Major scale. The notes in this scale are C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. Note that the first and last notes are the same, but an octave apart. (It could be argued that the upper C is in fact the bottom note of the next octave.) —Bkell 08:17, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• An octave is the fundamental interval or frequency ratio in music. (Other intervals based on counting notes in the major (or occasionally minor) scale are also important: thirds, fifths, and sevenths are frequently mentioned, and many of us can immediately recognize the difference between major and minor keys by hearing a major third or a minor third.)

The problem starts with not having realized early enough that "none" has a number to go with it. The ratio between two adjacent Cs is called an octave because that between adjacent notes of the major scale is called a second. What's a first? The relationship between a note and itself. (Duh??) If medieval choir directors had studied Arabic mathematics, they might have called a first a "zero-th" and an octave something like a heptave.

The special status of 8 can also be explained in the fact the ear (er, i mean brain) likes to hear not a major scale of 7 different notes, but of the 7 followed by the higher or lower version of the first note: the sequence of the first 7 notes sounds incomplete; the so-called ear is waiting for that last "shoe" to drop.

--Jerzy(t) 19:44, 2005 Feb 8 (UTC)

• I find the Seven thing very plausible in light of Newton's IIRC well documented pursuit of alchemy, a very metaphysical attempt at science.

But i also recall a physics teacher who probably didn't know abt Seven; this teacher's story was that

Newton did a pretty decent job of resolving the solar spectrum (no arc lamp as substitute or comparison until decade of 1800s, and he needed as intense a source as he could get), and found what are now understood as solar absorption bands: narrow, relatively dark interruptions of the spectrum. He found dark (or at least faint) bands, more or less distinct, at places he was willing to call boundaries between adjacent pairs of colors in the ROYGBV spectrum, and convinced himself that they were "real" boundaries between colors. (I don't know how well he resolved them, but he'd have been able to extrapolate from his experience of improving resolution as the quality of his prisms and perhaps lenses improved, and to visualize the likelihood of the weak bands potentially resolving further into dark bands. "Hey, the sun itself doesn't know these colors, i'll bet there just aren't any such colors." Note the sun (not earth) was his center of the solar system and probably the universe, and probably very metaphysically charged. And even without that significance, IMO the idea of varying hues within a "real" color that is separated rom other colors by bands corresponding to missing "nonexistent" colors, is very appealing to the human desire to draw boundaries.) But there were these two dark (or faint) bands between blue and violet, too pronounced to ignore, or too awkwardly spaced to ignore one and not the other. So he decided there was a seventh color between B&V, and declared the "real" colors to be ROYGBIV, giving indigo the status we are now discussing, based on his whacked-out assumption that the dark lines were in some sense reflecting something fundamental about color distinctions.

(IMO this is not inconsistent with the Seven story being essentially true.)

If this is true, IMO this article should discuss it as well as what's already there, perhaps linking to something already in another article. Again, if anyone has been there and can give me a link to save my searching, i'd be grateful.

--Jerzy(t) 19:44, 2005 Feb 8 (UTC)

I agree... this is a very plausible explanation and I would like to see it be included in the article if it can be verified. --Ctachme 05:56, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

So strong is the force of Newton’s authority, and so weak are humans’ ability to think for themselves, that Newton’s indigo [dark blue] is accepted universally as a separate color. This is in spite of the fact that it is admitted in our time that he named seven colors in order to have them correspond to some extrinsic order, such as the musical scale of do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti. The article attempts to express this by citing secondary sources.Lestrade (talk) 02:33, 13 July 2013 (UTC)Lestrade

Indigo known??

Is the word indigo a well-known color term in any way independent of teaching ROYGBIV?? Georgia guy 22:00, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, people only ever know indigo solely because of ROYGBIV, it is virtually never used in everyday usage. In my opinion it really it is no more a color than any other dye because of this. --Ctachme 02:03, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If Indigo is not a color, then NNE is not a direction.--RLent 17:38, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Is indigo bluer than violet

According to Newton's spectrum, it is, but according to Wikipedia, it is not. The color Wikipedia says is indigo is a shade, and can be converted to a hue by lightening it, and when I lightened it with Microsoft Paint, I got the color 147 0 255. Wikipedia says violet is 139 0 255. Any comments?? Georgia guy 21:34, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In case you can't tell, indigo doesn't really exist, therefore people try to make up where they think it would go, and they don't always guess close to what it is "supposed" to be. Theortecially, it is supposed to be between blue and violet, but in real life so few people know what it is that anyone can get by by making it whatever they want in that part of the spectrum. That said, the colors that are used at wikipedia come from the X11 color names. However, whoever compiled that list (nobody really knows) really hadn't the slighest clue what they were doing. --Ctachme 22:43, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ctachme, have you not read the rest of this discussion page? Indigo does exist. It is a valid color. Kat, Queen of Typos 10:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

The reason it seems "bluer" is that violet can't be reproduced in sRGB space. The spectral color that Newton would have been describing is outside the gamut for sRGB so those coordinates are just an approximation. In fact, none of the spectral colors can be reproduced on a monitor. Lime in the Coconut 13:27, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Japanese external links

These are probably very helpful if you read Japanese:

• http://www.sinkukan.com/main_ai.html
• http://www.dento.gr.jp/konyu/jp/jiten.html

so maybe someone who does might want to copy them across? --Phil | Talk 10:11, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

Between blue & violet

Based on Wikipedia's color standards, indigo is not between blue and violet, see above for details. However, there is a color that is between blue & violet according to Wikipedia's standards; guess what it is?? Persian blue. Georgia guy 23:26, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

take a look at CIE 1931 color space to get a better look at what falls between violet (bottom left corner of the horseshoe) and blue. Of course, your monitor can't produce these colors so it's only an approximation. Lime in the Coconut 14:18, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Indigo Children

I removed the short spiel on 'Indigo Children' as it was patent nonsense/unscholarly Snarfevs 08:00, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

See Indigo Children

Indigo in Doom

Removed part relating to the game Doom, as it is irrelevant. It's the equivalent of saying that the Protoss are yellow in Starcraft; it has no place here.

Indigo can't be reproduced on a computer screen

Why does the article say indigo can't be reproduced on a computer screen? What with 32 million colors, I would think that's ridiculous. In answering this please don't simply reply "it doesn't exist." Kat, Queen of Typos 00:41, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

That paragraph was added by User:Ashley Y; I consider it nonsense, and have thus deleted it. --moof 15:26, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

The spectral color "indigo" can't be reproduced, nor can any other spectral color. This refers to the color indigo in the rainbow, not the dye or pigment. Lime in the Coconut 14:20, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Shades of Blue

I noticed that Indigo is in the category of "shades of violet". But according to the article, it is somewhere between violet and blue. Therefore, it seems to me that it ought also to be in the category of "shades of blue". I have added the category info. (You can remove it, of course, if you violently disagree...) SpectrumDT 11:47, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Out-of-place paragraphs

I removed the following paragraphs:

Indigo is also the Spanish name for India, which is one of the earliest known places to have used the Indigo flower as a dye for clothes. Other areas to use Indigo dye in the ancient World included Egypt and Greece.

The British in India during the Raj often forced locals to plant Indigo in their fields for use in English mills for dyeing cotton. Growing Indigo in a field contaminates the soil for certain other food crops. This led to famines in many areas of India during the British Raj.

These really belong in the articles about the dye and/or plant, rather than color, but I forget at the moment if there's some arcane procedure for moving data to another article, and am sleepy. Good night! Lusanaherandraton 07:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Indiglo

I don't know if the see also for Indiglo belongs in this article. I thought about removing it, but I could see how someone searching for Indiglo could have ended up at this page by mistake. PaleAqua 21:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Who accepts indigo

I called for a citation on the weasel words "Others continue to accept it." If indigo is accepted as an actual perceptible spectral color category, contradicting essentially all color science books that I've looked at, then we ought to have a verifiable source for that, not a weaselly "others". Dicklyon 17:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Shades comparison strip charts

The strips of color in the comparison chart, which generally duplicate the colors provided at the bottom via the templates, are found now only in magenta, cyan, and indigo of all the common color names. I propose we remove it from here, as it's ugly, strange, and duplicative. Any objections or support? Dicklyon 04:32, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I strongly object to removing these charts. I created all of them and I think they are beautiful. They are not duplicative--the Color Comparison Chart displays the shades of a particular color in approximate order of their shades (from the lightest at the top to most saturated in the middle to the darkest at the bottom) rather than in alphabetical order as in the Shades Template at the bottom of the article. The purpose of these Color Comparison Charts is to enable the Wikipedia user to more easily pick out a particular color which they may need for a particular use. For example, if someone is going to design a website, repaint a room, paint their house, or purchase a new automobile, they can look at the Color Comparison Charts and choose which color is best for or is closest to the color they need. It is much easier to do this when the colors are arranged in order of their shade instead of being arranged in alphabetical order. In addition, they display colors such as Crayola colors which may not be in the regular color articles and thus allow the user a greater selection of colors to choose from. I am restoring all of them with a short explanation as to their purpose and use. Keraunos 08:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

What happened to the beautiful chart showing all the shades of indigo? I loved being able to use the color coordinates to create custom colors in whatever application I was using. I disagree with it being duplicative. Now I have to go elsewhere for the information. Answers.com here I come.

Relative Importance

Are there any stats on how many this there are for the dye vs. disambig and this page (and how people might be getting from one to the other)? The color seems to really be of so little importance compared to the plant and dye. This is almost like (the opposite of) having black be about carbon black and people having to explicitly go to a separate entry for the color. At worst, this should be handled as is done with orange, the bare word is the disambiguation. --Belg4mit 18:49, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Newton and seven revisited

This phrase is incorrect "but also to link colors with the (known) planets, days of the week,". In Newton's time there were only 6 known planets. Uranus was discovered by Herschel in 1781. Newton died in 1727. Zen-in (talk) 16:16, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Mood Indigo

You guys mention two obscure birds, but not a well known song? Link Mood Indigo, please and thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.30.14.50 (talk) 04:27, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Indium

This chemical element (metal) was named after the color, so it may be worth mentioning--R8R Gtrs (talk) 12:41, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Indigo is Dark Blue, not Violet

Indigo is a dark blue. The plant is dark blue. The dye is dark blue. Indigo jeans are dark blue. The Canadian bookstore called Indigo uses dark blue in its logo. The idea that Indigo is a purple is a common mistake of Physics students (who are overrepresented on Wikipedia), who misunderstand what Newton meant when he put Indigo between Blue and Violet on the spectrum. When you look at the spectrum, there is a very noticeable bright cyan stripe that is distinct from the larger area of dark blue. Newton was probably referring to the cyan stripe as "blue", and referring to the darker blue area as "indigo". He may have been influenced by Italians, who have two different words for light blue and dark blue. Scientivore (talk) 15:46, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct. The beginning of this article has a somewhat misleading description, and several of the color swatches later on should be scrapped. –jacobolus (t) 00:08, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Can you scrap them yourself?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:17, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

These are very valid points, and I've tried to include something about this in the article. Somewhere there must be a history of the colour term that describes the shift in conception.--Annielogue (talk) 22:11, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

If I recall, the shift in people referring to the light blue colour instead of the dark blue colour came about with the increased prevalence of lightly dyeing textiles instead of fully dyed textiles (within the past 50 years). Compare dark blue jeans (which are traditionally fully indigo dyed) and light blue jeans (lightly dyed indigo, or a faded full dye). — al-Shimoni (talk) 09:10, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Pokemon

Indigo Plateau is the name of a place in the original game (and its remakes) where the players take on the final challenges of the game. Would this be appropriate for the "in culture" section? 74.132.249.206 (talk) 23:27, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Is this really useful?

At right is shown the actual color of indigo dye.

No, actually, at right is shown the projection into sRGB, by way of several other color spaces, of a photograph of the actual color of indigo dye. Does this really help anyone? If it does, perhaps the photo should simply be identified for what it is. 121a0012 (talk) 04:31, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Revelations of Gary Waldman

Waldman wrote, Isaac Newton used colour terms so-and-such, and the citation suggests that Newton was a pervert… but anybody who learned old literature about colours should know that historical “blue” is a broad range of hues centered roughly on azure, and the modern RGB’s blue is nearly its extreme (short-wave) tip. Newton lived in 17th and early 18th centuries, but even for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “blue” (German: Blau) was complementary to orange… enough said. BTW, since Goethe wrote that yellow is complementary to violet, his “violet” is no more short-waved than our indigo. Our violet ≈ Goethe’s Blaurot. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:14, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Hardy and Perrin

Do they actually say that indigo is a deep and bright variation of blah-blah-blah? BTW lightness has nothing to do with spectrality. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:31, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Mnemonic is Difficult to Understand as It's Too Near Another Name

Would some please add in the mnemonic taught it in schools in the UK, that the colours/colors of the rainbow are 'Richard Of York Gained Battles In Vain'...someone has written mnemonic but it's just initials and too near the name James to make sense. Here's a link from the telegraph as proof it was taught in the UK http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1575102/Ed-Balls-red-faced-after-Singing-a-Rainbow.html Thanx Veryscarymary (talk) 13:50, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Vandalism

What the heck is up with the fool who keeps putting inane stuff like "Purple is so cool that it made indigo violet."

It's sentences like the one above that should be cause for bans from editing. It's not so much that it interferes with the article; most of the information in the article is right on point. It's the fact that immature people (more than likely adolescents) are vandalizing pages with stupidity. I.E. they are "dumbing-down" the article in question.

I can't revert the changes because the vandalism just happened (and it's not listed in the "Edit" section for the page yet); however, once it is fixed, it seems like this person will vandalize the page again.

(Note that I haven't logged in, but my account is "TR1N3TY" on Wikipedia.)

71.83.137.23 (talk) 04:37, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Four Major Tones and Additional Variations: Colors that are not Indigo

The article defines indigo as "the color between blue and violet." How is it then that several of the colors displayed under the headings of "Distinction between the four major tones of indigo" and "Additional variations of indigo" contain more green than red according to the sRGB values listed? This places them between blue and cyan, not blue and violet. Under the four major tones section, "Indigo Dye" lists SRGB values of 9, 31, and 146 which would seem to place it somewhere between blue and green. In "Additional variations of indigo", Crayola's "Bright Indigo" has values of 93,96, 189; Denim has 21, 96, 189; Violet-Blue has 50, 74, 178; Imperial Blue has 0, 35, 149; Midnight Blue has 25, 25, 112; Dark Imperial Blue has 0, 65, 106; and Japanese Indigo has 38, 67, 72. Perhaps some of these values were simply entered incorrectly. Others like Midnight Blue, which has equal values of red an green, simply don't belong. Please consider revising. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.123.128.188 (talk) 13:16, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Colors Values Matching

I preferred the old Indigo Dye section, but the Tropical Indigo is fine and I'll accept it. However, only the name and Hex were changed? I've changed the other scales (RGB, HSV, and CMYK) to match, but I think these should be checked for the other colors. Additionally, I've never looked at how Wikipedia works exactly, but is there a way HSV, RGB, and CMYK could be automatically calculated from the Hex? It seems this would add consistency, encourage editing, and ensure factuality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CosineP (talk • contribs) 22:23, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Look, Sometimes, indigo appears as a tertiary. And violet and purple are the same thing, but should somebody protect the page? 174.92.81.16 (talk) 21:51, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• I posted this on your talk pages, but I'm not sure if you're reading those, so I'll post it here as well:

Hi there. If you look at the article on violet, you'll see that it describes it as a tertiary color between purple and blue - not a synonym for purple. It goes on to say:

Violet and purple look very similar; but violet is a true color, with its own wavelength on the spectrum of visible light, while purple is a composite color, made by combining blue and red.

Additionally, there are several sources on the page for violet (which can be seen in inline citations, as well as in the References and Notes sections at the bottom of the page) to back up this information. Meanwhile, since indigo is made by adding even more blue to purple (or adding blue to violet), it is not a tertiary color, since it is made by combining a primary and a tertiary color. This information is mentioned in the References section of the indigo article.

If you have sources (books or websites) that back up what you are saying, you can include those in your edits. Or, if you don't know how to add references to pages, you can just write the book titles or paste the links here and I will gladly add them to the pages for you. For now, though, I have reverted your edits since there are no sources for them, and they contradict the sourced information in their articles. I'm not trying to personally attack you, or imply that what you're saying is wrong - just that on Wikipedia, sources for statements are very important, so statements that have sources will always take priority over unsourced statements. Let me know if you have any other questions or issues! Fench (talk) 22:08, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Prussian blue

Looks to be quite similar to Prussian blue. – Sca (talk) 15:00, 27 January 2016 (UTC)