Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Future Apple Pencil Could Have Sensor to Sample Colors From the Real World
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Oh, I read the story, and noticed that. I found that one-liner unsatisfying. Rather than commenting on my literacy skills, it would be great would explain the optics and how that relates to graphic design in practice. I'd appreciate it if you could help out there.
[automerge]1595033596[/automerge]
Thank you! I'll look into that reference.
...or just switch to the erase tool that every app has?
I guess it depends on what they're after and how sophisticated their spectrometer is. If the goal is to capture the color as you see it, then ambient light is probably ok. If the goal is to capture the true color of the surface, then they'll need to provide a known light source that they can use as a reference.
The difference, I think, is the application. If you want to match paint to what's already on your wall, you need a reference light because the actual color changes depending on the color temperature in the room (and color quality). If you're drawing a scene and just want to pull color inspiration from the world around you, then capturing it as you perceive it is probably good enough because you're mixing it onscreen with other colors that you're matching too already.
That might be preferable, actually, because there are times that the ambient light isn't showing the true color of an object. Florescent lights in particular can have big gaps in spectrum that make colors shift drastically relative to daylight-- not just color temperature which is fairly easy to correct, but color spectrum which you just can't correct because the information isn't there to edit.
Where it starts to become a problem with your eyes is if you're capturing color in one environment and using it in another. When you take a photograph indoors under incandescent lights, the photos look very warm and yellow when you get them back. It didn't look that way to your eyes at the time because your eyes are doing all sorts of mental white balancing.
Color is fascinating...
I read the article, it says could. You didn't read the patent... Light emitter doesn't show up until claim 10.
Last edited:
They did. The light supplied by Apple Pencil May not be the light suitable for color sampling. It can help, but only for so much.
I'm curious what the weakness in TrueTone is. I know NightShift doesn't try to keep color accuracy, it just pulls the blue out. I'd thought TrueTone remapped the color temp according to the ambient.
Even on a well calibrated display, the color can't be truly accurate. Color isn't emitted in three spectral lines of varying intensity, but that's how our displays work. We have red/green/blue sensitive cones in our eyes and your display has red/green/blue emitters to try and trick each cone into thinking it's seeing something that is a natural color. But those two aren't actually matched to each other. Every person is different, so no display match the color of the original object for multiple people.
It's pretty amazing that it works as well as it does though.
😂❤😂 LMAO
With all the heat-related touch and pencil irresponsiveness I’ve sadly experienced while using iPads, this just made me fall out of my chair laughing. Thank you for giving me a huge chuckle about that.🤗😘🤗
Now, a color picker sensor on the Apple Pencil? Yes, please! That would be terrific. I ❤ the Apple Pencil and would be delighted to have that feature.
I am so used to the eyedropper color select tools from Photoshop etc., and find it a challenge to match the skin tones from reference images using Procreate. Yes, I’d buy this pencil.
Last edited:
You're talking to your customer about their first advertising ever. They show you a product only their friends and family have seen. You bring up your design application. You put the color sensor to the product, to grab colours, draw the shape, add the shadows, and within a few minutes, you have a design concept without a camera.
It's going to have to be really accurate or it won't matter, display technology will have to match as well.
[automerge]1595051109[/automerge]
[automerge]1595051109[/automerge]
I am a graphic designer who constantly has to explain “no you cannot get accurate colors with your app and phone camera the regular way. You just ****ing can’t” to people (and boss). Yes I have every idea how great this is. This is almost like owning a colorimeter but with direct system integration
I’d comfortably drop $400 on this on day one
131 upvotes
-via Reddit
I could be wrong about this, but... If you had the skills to make a good looking sketch (what you describe as drawing the shape, add the shadows and so on) wouldn’t you be able to quickly guess the colors to apply to the sketch just by looking at the product with your own eyes?
I’ve never seen anybody good at drawing having trouble guessing the color of an object.
Last edited:
Apples Recruitment process for hiring engineers for these types of products is what makes Apple so unique. I can’t see what applications this will be useful to me, but then again, I may not be the ‘target demographic’ for a product like this, but it certainly will appeal to sketchers/artists, etc.
First post here, been lurking for...a decade?
My daughter is the little girl holding the color-sampling digital pencil on the landing page at https://www.mozbii.com. Jeremy Shu designed it, launched on Kickstarter in 2015, and has been selling the pencil and iOS apps for a while.
My daughter is the little girl holding the color-sampling digital pencil on the landing page at https://www.mozbii.com. Jeremy Shu designed it, launched on Kickstarter in 2015, and has been selling the pencil and iOS apps for a while.
Written like a true art director deeply buried in the disappointments of accurate color reproduction. Oh, the challenges of going from color display (no matter how well calibrated) to a CMYK press proof.
I have a feeling Apple will manage the accuracy thing pretty well, but the commercial potential for this is not so much for color pre-press as it is for just plain creative fun.
It won't just be about applying real-world colors to digital drawings, but also for use with Photoshop and Final Cut Pro - modifying the color of photos and video. No doubt it'll also be used for things serious folks might find silly - selfies; changing photos of you in that conservative, mauve prom dress Mom made you wear into some crimson statement of freedom, etc. Some enterprising Etsy sellers will custom-dye clothing based on an easily-captured color sample, etc. And imagine how much fun someone might have painting/redecorating an AR environment.
So my thought is that this thing, if it comes to pass, will not be extravagantly expensive - my "marketing gut" says a bit less than twice the price of today's Pencils (the same psychology as $1.99 vs. $2.00). Plenty of people will spend an extra $80-$100 on a whim if it catches their fancy. Besides, the real money won't be made on the Apple Color Pencil, it'll be made on the additional iPads that are sold to go with it - both to image-making professionals and the public at large. It's one of those applications that could push a fair number of "Nothing can replace my Mac" die-hards to add iPad to their workflows (and, of course, there's Sidecar to make sure their Macs remain the center of their work life).
Well, I guess I'll be one of the few that is not impressed at all.
If you are an artist of any sort (I do some painting), you know how to look at colours and replicate them very closely.
The integration into the pencil would simply force me and people like me to pay for a tool they don't need.
If you are an artist of any sort (I do some painting), you know how to look at colours and replicate them very closely.
The integration into the pencil would simply force me and people like me to pay for a tool they don't need.
Last edited:
I“am a illustrator and don’t see a benefit in this for creating digital artwork. Creating colored paintings is always about the interrelation of surfaces and light sources. May someone explain a real world use case for this?
Hadn't thought of it, but now I know I could have one... just shut up and take my money! That would literally be a THING!
[automerge]1595068173[/automerge]
[automerge]1595068173[/automerge]
I am also an illustrator and would bite their hands off to get one. It's one of those things that you'd find to be useful in ways you don't even know about yet. I'd love to be able to select colours more quickly and accurately than I can do at the moment. Even if it was just having a colour swatch chart to hand and selecting colours from that, it'd save a ton of time - and if you do illustrations for money, anything than saves time and/or makes life a bit easier is always worth doing.