"History of Sonic" book color issues

[smogfog]

I've received my copy of this book a month ago. Just recently I've managed to explore it somehow properly.

What did I saw?

Blue colors look violet. Gradients look like they consist of 256 or 65536 colors. No, it's not a scanner's fault.

 

And, lol, they used SADX PC screenshots in SA article. SADX PC lacks mipmapping, this is an issue I've singlehandedly fixed in 2010. This version was ported to PC by famous Bitmap Brothers. Now so-called "quality" of their work have been perpetuated in this book.

I guess Pix`n`Love just took what SEGA gave them though.

I can't believe that in 2013 we're unable to correctly print 24-bit images on a glossy paper so it would look just like on computer screen. So does this palette shift appear in several book parties only, or in entire circulation?

[spinny]

This is because of how printing works. Due to CYMK not having a pinpointed blue colour (or something like that... I read the reason quite a long time ago), it goes for more of an indigo-violet feel. All copies of the book have it.

[Vertekins]

My book's pages don't look so bad   I've been pretty impressed with the high-resolution and correctly coloured art in my book and they haven't stood-out to me as off at all.

[Zaysho]

What Super Spindash said (beat me to it!).

 

To be fair, the particular shade of blue Sonic is often has a bit of a violeti-ish tone anyway. If he was more of a cyan or just a lighter blue, it wouldn't be that big of a deal in print. The colors probably look more "correct" on screen, and likely aren't really adjusted for print materials. It's far from a deal breaker though. The image quality, bar some ugly magnified sprites, is actually pretty good overall.

 

My only issue with the book is its lack of completeness, particularly in the character bios (where is Omega?) and some of the game summaries (why does Mean Bean Machine earn a double-page spread and Chaotix only gets a blurb? Chaotix at least introduced some characters that are still part of the Sonic mythology, Mean Bean Machine is based on a cartoon series that's better buried). But that's veering off topic.

[Uraraka]

I have that book, I like it a lot . honestly, the characters exact colors seem to shift from game to game. I mean, Sonic is darker sometimes and lighter other times... and sometimes Knuckles is more orange, and sometimes he is more pink .

[SkyLlama]

It's hard to compare for me because the scanner did lose the glossy aspect of the pages, but I'd say it looks more or less fine.

 

I can scan in some from my copy if you like to compare scans of the book.

Edited August 6, 2013 by SkyLlama

[Tenko]

The book is awesome, but most of its contents if not all of it is general knowledge to most fans. I wish they had gone into more detail with a lot of the games. Especially the side ones. You got the best chance to tell a complete history in that book and they skim over most of it. There was very little new or unseen material too. As has been mentioned the character bios and glossary were missing quite a few characters, mostly older ones. And even some points or facts that have been mentioned before were absent.

Overall they did a brilliant job but its always disappointing when something like this starts off detailed and then works its way to a rush job around half way and boosts to the finish with the info getting less and less and the pictures getting bigger >.<

[Amomynous]

Not with the 'it's a fact of printing' explanations, mine doesn't look this purple.

The difference between an RGB blue and CMYK blue is only slight.

Edited August 7, 2013 by Amomynous

[SkyLlama]

Here you go. This is a slightly cropped, but none the less raw from the scanner image (cropped by the scanner).

 

It's 38MB if I recall. Dropbox will only give a preview, you'll have to download it to compare to your original scans. Of course there will be some differences between scanners, but it should be fine.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p4shh5jn61a2sws/orig.png

Edited August 7, 2013 by SkyLlama

[mikeblastdude]

The colors in my book have always looked fine to me. o_o

 

The only issue I can think of with the book is the page with Tails' misplaced foot.

 

 

That shoe at the bottom is totally not connected to a leg. XD