Hair color standardization thread

Besides the hair colors in tag group:hair color, we have several ill-defined color tags that see little use:

• auburn_hair (405 posts)
• beige_hair (72 posts)
• light_blue_hair (97 posts)
• maroon_hair (153 posts)
• platinum_blonde (527 posts)

Of these, only auburn hair has a wiki entry, albeit one that implores users to use red hair or brown hair instead. That one has been addressed before in topic #8063, but based on its wiki, the matter seems unresolved.

I have strong reservations about beige hair since it is practically synonymous with light brown hair. Platinum blonde could probably be split among blonde hair (post #1659425, post #2573961) and silver hair (post #1313170, post #2470769). Maroon hair looks like an assortment of shades of brown (post #2438366), red (post #2120828), and purple (post #1940562), and might be made redundant by auburn hair. Light blue hair, on the other hand, is fairly distinctive, and "light" shades aren't unprecedented, as we already have pink hair and lavender hair.

Should any of these colors be made "official"? Part of the problem with standardizing colors is that not everyone's monitor is calibrated the same, so different users will see the same image differently. The more colors we add to the list, the harder it becomes to draw lines between those colors. Thoughts?

EDIT: Renamed topic to better reflect the ongoing discussion. Originally "Unlisted hair colors".

@BrokenEagle98 raised the idea of standardizing color names in topic #13836, which I very much agree there is a need for. I guess this may as well be the thread to discuss it.

Currently tag group:colors lists these basic colors:

• aqua
• black
• blue
• brown
• green
• grey
• orange (color)
• pink
• purple
• red
• white
• yellow

(I'm excluding sepia, since that's only used to describe the tone of monochrome images, not things like eye or hair or clothing color).

Tag group:eyes tags uses the same colors, but adds silver eyes and lavender eyes. Tag group:hair color follows suit, except yellow hair is called blonde hair.

With the above things in mind, I propose this: the basic set of colors should be the above list and only the above list. Other colors should not be used. If more shades of a color are really needed, then use e.g. light brown or dark brown rather than things like beige or tan or whatever else. This way colors are easier to search, and vagueness is (hopefully) kept to a minimum.

A problem is that silver hair and lavender hair wouldn't fit into this scheme. I would argue that these should really be grey hair and light purple hair, but that's a can of worms in itself. So I'd say those tags could be grandfathered in, but new color tags like auburn hair or maroon hair shouldn't be created. A line has to be drawn somewhere, otherwise things will become a huge mess.

I think silver hair wants keeping separate from grey hair as grey hair is the colour of old people, whereas silver hair is a rather different colour from this, with more fantasy associations (and often including a hint of blue).

I've never really seen much point in a lavender hair tag myself, and generally only use it when the character in question is generally associated on here with having that hair colour (eg. yayoi_(kantai_collection)).

An auburn or ginger hair tag is an awkward one, as this is generally considered a distinct hair colour in real life. Which is probably why it keeps getting used. I've never used the tag on account of it saying not to but there are so many times when I've wanted to. Usually involving Kagerou.

Agree with the above colors for the most part. I could do without aqua though, using light blue instead. Pink isn't a primary color IMO, but it carries its own unique connotation that it does become an essential color.

Also IMO, silver should be light grey, and lavender should be light purple.

I'm absolutely against nixing aqua and lavender for hair and eye colors, as there are plenty of characters who have those kind of half-way-between colors and it makes it harder to find characters that are just plain blue, green, silver, pink, or purple if those tags are diluted with characters that are only sorta that color. For hair colors, I think auburn and platinum blonde should remain for the same reason (I'd be more adamant on the former, but I think the latter is legitimately distinct enough to exist as well, when it's hard to tell if a character should be considered silver/white or blonde). Light blue is not the same thing as aqua. Aqua is catch-all for anything in the bluish-green spectrum and could be used on very dark hair too. Light blue if used correctly (as it is on a few posts) should not have any greenish-looking hair colors. Though I'm not sure if light blue and maroon are thought of and/or distinct enough to be worth defending. I'm not really against them either. Beige seems to be too poorly defined in its usage for a hair color so far.

I don't like silver being light grey - IMO (with hair colors) it's often closer to white. In fact, I have trouble choosing between the two quite often and sometimes end up using both.

Also +1 to what EB said about keeping aqua - it's absolutely not light blue, it's a mix of blue and green. It's also quite common, and very distinct from both blue and green as a hair color. Lavender I'm less sure about - Yayoi is a good example, but on the other hand many pictures of her are also things you'd want to see when searching for silver or purple hair (depending on the picture). In a perfect world, it might be a nice distinction to make, but I'm not sure if it can be made consistently enough to be a useful tag. Edit: Looking through the lavender hair tag, there are a lot of images that don't fit purple or silver, so it's probably worth keeping. It's pretty well populated as well.

In general though, I'm in favor of reducing hair color tag fragmentation. Beige and maroon for example should probably go - monitor / environment differences are more than the actual differences between beige and brown / light brown, and pretty much everything I see under maroon I would have tagged either red or brown.

Sort of side note: Is it acceptable, and should it maybe even be recommended, to tag multiple hair colors if it's in between or you can't decide? I find that to be the least problematic compromise sometimes.

☆♪ said:

Sort of side note: Is it acceptable, and should it maybe even be recommended, to tag multiple hair colors if it's in between or you can't decide? I find that to be the least problematic compromise sometimes.

I find it acceptable at least. I tend to add tags and not replace if it seems too borderline.

I only tag something as maroon_hair if I feel it shouldn't be tagged any other color. I think other people have a different idea of what "purple" is from me, since I don't think maroon can be replaced by that.

BrokenEagle98 said:

Agree with the above colors for the most part. I could do without aqua though, using light blue instead. Pink isn't a primary color IMO, but it carries its own unique connotation that it does become an essential color.

Also IMO, silver should be light grey, and lavender should be light purple.

Strongly disagree regarding aqua / light blue, for reasons already stated by others. Aqua is a particular greenish-blue hue and isn't limited to light or dark shades.

Also, why change lavender to "light purple"? Isn't that what lavender (the color, not the flower) is generally understood to mean? It seems like if we change this, we might as well change pink to "light red".

☆♪ said:

I don't like silver being light grey - IMO (with hair colors) it's often closer to white. In fact, I have trouble choosing between the two quite often and sometimes end up using both.

...

In general though, I'm in favor of reducing hair color tag fragmentation. Beige and maroon for example should probably go - monitor / environment differences are more than the actual differences between beige and brown / light brown, and pretty much everything I see under maroon I would have tagged either red or brown.

Sort of side note: Is it acceptable, and should it maybe even be recommended, to tag multiple hair colors if it's in between or you can't decide? I find that to be the least problematic compromise sometimes.

I may be in the minority here - as is often the case - but I seen the distinction between grey and silver hair as a matter of luster rather than one being a lighter or darker shade than the other. Grey hair is for dull, flat colors, whereas silver hair has a metallic sheen. The character's age is irrelevant.

As for beige and light brown (and tan, if we're speaking about color tags in general), I have no problem with keeping one of these tags, but it should be only one; any additional levels of precision will only create more headaches for us. Let's pick one term for pale shades of brown and stick with it.

Using multiple color tags for borderline cases is something I wouldn't fault you for doing since the whole purpose of tags is to aid search. If the extra tag helps users find what they're looking for, great. The worst case scenario is someone having one of those tags blacklisted, but in the case of hair colors, this seems so unlikely that I'd be willing to take that chance.

mock said:

I only tag something as maroon_hair if I feel it shouldn't be tagged any other color. I think other people have a different idea of what "purple" is from me, since I don't think maroon can be replaced by that.

Just out of curiosity, could you give us an example of what you call "purple", then? You tagged post #1940562 as maroon hair and I don't know what could be more purple than that.

iridescent_slime said:

I may be in the minority here - as is often the case - but I seen the distinction between grey and silver hair as a matter of luster rather than one being a lighter or darker shade than the other. Grey hair is for dull, flat colors, whereas silver hair has a metallic sheen. The character's age is irrelevant.

This, and I would add that grey hair usually has a darker hue, such as post #2672063. Hair colors take a more literal approach when it comes to tagging. White hair is snow white, red hair is blood red (as opposed to the orange in real life, which is orange_hair), etc.

Let me try this again. In English there are 11 basic color words: white, grey, black, brown, red, pink, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple [1]. Obviously there are many more colors than these, but this is considered the basic set in English.

There are some oddities here: blue-green doesn't get a word, even though reddish-blue (purple) and reddish-yellow (orange) do. Pink gets a word, even though one might consider it just a lighter tint of red.

So let's look at basic colors according to color theory then. Here's a color wheel. Red, green, and blue are the primary colors [2]. The secondary colors are yellow (red+green), cyan (blue+green, what we call aqua), and magenta (red+blue, which we conflate with pink or purple). The tertiary colors include orange (red+yellow) and purple (blue+magenta), plus some other intermediates we don't have common names for, like chartreuse (green+yellow) and cerulean (blue+cyan).

The point is this: aqua is just as important as magenta is, yet we've aliased magenta. But fine, I have no problem with aqua, besides the inconsistency of having it and not magenta.

Lavender, on the other hand, is not a separate hue. It's just a lighter tint of purple. Likewise, beige is a light brown, auburn is dark reddish-brown, and maroon is either a dark red or dark purple.

But every color has lighter and darker variations. So then why does lavender deserve a tag and not mauve or crimson or mint green or periwinkle or navy blue? Why should we have maroon and auburn hair, and not burgundy or sienna or umber or chestnut or chocolate brown hair?

It's obvious why: it would be a nightmare. This is why I propose sticking with the basic colors we already have, which are simple and well-known and cover the color spectrum fairly well, and using light_* or dark_* for shades of existing colors. Not words like lavender or maroon, which are more obscure, harder to search, and more prone to ambiguity.

• [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Basic_color_terms
• [2]: Traditionally red, yellow, and blue were the primary colors in painting. I'm using RGB because that's what's used in computer graphics.

Regarding silver hair: in theory, there's a difference between silver hair and grey hair. In reality, silver hair is a hopeless mess. Just browse silver_hair. On the first couple pages I see everything from black (post #2673402) to grey (post #2672066) to white (post #2672463) to pink (post #2672626) to purple (post #2671476) to lavender (post #2672127) to blue (post #2672926) to blonde (post #2672447).

It's worthless, it includes nearly every color there is. A lot of this is only because we don't have tags for things like light blue, so everything gets lumped under silver.

evazion said:

black (post #2673402)

Not arguing against your point, but I think it's the old dude that the tag is for there.

Ah, you're right. Tagging something silver hair because a bald guy has grey eyebrows is just as dumb though. It's not hard to find other posts where dark grey is tagged as silver either.

Silver hair and gray hair were once one tag for about 2 years. They're separate tags again because having them as one also failed (they were separated again like 7 years ago). As such, even if it's a "mess", I would not support trying to purge one or merge the tags together, since doing that also has proven to not be the correct solution either.

evazion said:

Regarding silver hair: in theory, there's a difference between silver hair and grey hair. In reality, silver hair is a hopeless mess. Just browse silver_hair. On the first couple pages I see everything from black (post #2673402) to grey (post #2672066) to white (post #2672463) to pink (post #2672626) to purple (post #2671476) to lavender (post #2672127) to blue (post #2672926) to blonde (post #2672447).

It's worthless, it includes nearly every color there is. A lot of this is only because we don't have tags for things like light blue, so everything gets lumped under silver.

Keep in mind that some peoples' monitors are going to have shitty color calibration, if at all. What looks like white on one of my screens is actually beige on my main calibrated monitor. And the fact is white and silver hair will often have a lot of overlap because of peoples' interpretations of the color based on highlights/shadows and also on canonical color instead of tagging what they see.

evazion said:

So then why does lavender deserve a tag and not...navy blue?

Since you mentioned it, it's worth noting that navy blue legwear is sitting at well over 500 posts right now. Obviously someone seems to think it's distinctive enough to be tagged.

iridescent_slime said:

Since you mentioned it, it's worth noting that navy blue legwear is sitting at well over 500 posts right now. Obviously someone seems to think it's distinctive enough to be tagged.

Navy blue socks have their own tag on Pixiv. Sometimes they get tagged as black here, but both colors are very common for legwear and can appear distinctly in the same image (post #1746490, post #2258008, post #2520408). It's beneficial to correctly tag them IMO.

iridescent_slime said:

I seen the distinction between grey and silver hair as a matter of luster rather than one being a lighter or darker shade than the other. Grey hair is for dull, flat colors, whereas silver hair has a metallic sheen. The character's age is irrelevant.

I agree that shine is the defining characteristic of silver hair, rather than lightness (in case my original post was interpreted otherwise). What I had in mind when comparing with white was things like mishima_kurone original, where mostly they look silver to me, but the artist themselves calls their series SHIROKAMI PROJECT ("shirokami" meaning "white hair"), and the pictures are tagged with either or both pretty much at random. In general, actually, it might be more common to draw "white hair" shiny than not - I'm not sure where the distinction is, really.

I generally tag silver_hair when there's a metallic sheen, or a very slight blue or purple tint with no bounce lighting influencing the perceived color of the hair. I'll tag white_hair if it has no perceived pigment; grey_hair if it is between white and black (biased toward a darker shade) without any tint of other colors. Basically, if it appears as a variation on Wikipedia's silver color icon ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Color_icon_silver.svg ), I'll tag it silver.

Though tbh, checking through my uploads... I see a lot of white hair pictures tagged as silver. Though in this case, my excuse is that I forgot that they were different tags since I remembered silver and grey being the same/aliased to one another.

Occasionally I'll redo hair color tags on pictures because I'll find pink_hair tagged as blonde_hair, or blonde_hair tagged as brown_hair, etc, etc.

On the topic of Lavender and Aqua, it seems to me that lavender_hair is largely relevant due to patchouli_knowledge while aqua_hair is largely relevant due to hatsune_miku. Changing the hair color tags to a light_purple and light_blue would lead to 25k and 51k tag changes, whereas there aren't many hyper-popular characters associated with maroon and navy_blue.

I changed post #2672447 to blonde_hair because that's just undeniable.
Similarly, (R-18) post #2672926 changed to blue as Keine's hair is even described in the wiki as being "bluish-white".
post #2672127 should probably get something like... multicolored_hair because it's definitely silver up front and shifts to lavender toward the back.
post #2671476 remains silver because of background lighting and shijou_takane pictures are almost unanimously either grey_hair or silver_hair in my opinion.
post #2672626 changed to grey_hair because of bounce lighting, but that's a bit hazy to me and PROBABLY should be tagged pink. Though her hair is more like a brownish-grey in other illustrations.

No real argument for the other three. Archer's hair is definitely white, Kiyoshimo's hair in that picture is debatable because of luster, and the old man in the nsfw picture has grey/silver hair.

☆♪ said:
Sort of side note: Is it acceptable, and should it maybe even be recommended, to tag multiple hair colors if it's in between or you can't decide? I find that to be the least problematic compromise sometimes.

I never realized that was an option, but I might do that in the future for some of the hazier eye and hair colours.