Talk:Indigo

Takeaways from previous discussions

Regarding the label "Indigo"

1. Indigo is the legitimate name of a dye, a chemical extract, and several well-defined colors from various color systems.
2. The extract, the dye, the segment of the rainbow labelled indigo, and the colors that commercial color companies label indigo are all different from one another.
3. None are absolutely authoritative.

Regarding the inclusion of color swatches

Including color swatches may or may not be useful at this point, unless another system gives another color the label "indigo" there are many variations on indigo and it does not appear useful to include them all, nor add others as they appear.

This is all in my IMHO

Riventree (talk) 02:53, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

This indigo is too purple

This colour is not indigo, it's violet. Indigo would be something more like #3F00FF. Restfultree2022 (talk) 02:47, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Changing the color code

#3F00FF is kinda bright so I think it makes more sense if we use #3800DF instead of 3F00FF since indigo always been considered to be a deep violetish-blue and #3800DF is kinda a deep color. --IndieTheFurry (talk) 03:31, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Wrong Color

Indigo is a dark shade of blue, but someone has it showing a shade of purple that's similar to indigo instead. --174.17.102.201 (talk) 01:19, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

No, it is not varied colors. It's various shades of blue, some of which a color blind person could confuse for purple. --174.17.102.201 (talk) 01:21, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Yep. Indigo is the color of standard blue jeans as they were traditionally dyed with indigo (and now dyed with synthetic indigo). — al-Shimoni (talk) 00:07, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Your showing purple. I'm not colorblind. I'm tetrachromatic. I can clearly see the colors better than others. It's purple. People without tetrachromacy mix up purples, and blues. They can't see the difference. --184.101.140.186 (talk) 20:25, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

@174.17.102.201 I agree that this isn't indigo but purple. 83.83.171.177 (talk) 12:24, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. It is wrong. 2A00:23C5:FE18:2701:D8:C7A4:8466:E5B7 (talk) 19:31, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I have changed color code as per talk page from a violet color to indigo as all comments thus far agree #4B0082 is violet, not indigo. For now I have changed it to #330099 web safe indigo, the hue with "indigo" in the name which seems closest to the depictions in the photographs in the article, but feel free to change this to a better rendition of indigo if you have one. Personally I think #330099 is still way too close to purple. If the photos of the bird, mushroom and the indigo dye, as well as the rainbow diagram and Imeriki al-Shimoni's definition as being the color of blue jeans are indicative, then I would suggest "Imperial Blue" would actually be the closest, but I don't claim to be the expert.

According to the article, Newton's "blue" is actually cyan and Newton's "Indigo" is blue. Louise Myers' website seems to me to have the most helpful description:

However – we need to realize that his “blue” was closer to the cyan blue of printing inks. Today we think of this as aqua blue or turquoise. His “indigo” was what many people consider blue today. The indigo dye of the time is really towards the blue side of the spectrum! Think of the color of blue jeans, which were originally dyed with real indigo dye. So indigo is clearly a distinct color. But you can see a lot depends on how you see it and name it! Is Indigo Purple or Blue? Because there are different shades of indigo, it can depend on which one you are looking at. Even the experts don’t seem sure. Some of them are more towards the purple shade. And the color does sit between the two on the color wheel. Pantone describes it as ‘encompassing the qualities of blue with a violet red undertone’ – so that doesn’t really help! Farrow & Ball, the paint manufacturers, say it is ‘mainly blue with underlying violet notes’. But the color most often is said to be a blue. What Color Is Closest to Indigo? Another way to decide what color is indigo is to look at the color spectrum.

On the color wheel, indigo is found between blue and violet. Violet is the midway point between blue and purple.

https://louisem.com/419275/what-color-is-indigo

Imperial blue seems to be fairly close to the "Indigo" labelled on the color wheel on Louise Meyers' site.

To be fair, I have seen a few color websites which depict indigo as being nearly identical to violet, however one of them seems to be a near-clone of Wikipedia!

Most depictions and photos of of rainbows and the spectrum show cyan, imperial blue then violet, which backs up Louise Myers' statment about Newton's blue=cyan and Newton's indigo=blue. However in my opinion, if we regard the colors of the spectrum/rainbow as being red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet, it doesn't make sense to have red-orange-yellow-green-[a cyan color whose name we omit]-dark blue-[nearly violet]-violet.

John Spacey writes that Indigo was accidentally redefined when the color Web Indigo (purple) was assigned in the 1980s by programmers for the X11 operating system who had no background in color theory, and assigned the name Indigo to #4B0082 (i.e. purple), which became a standard name in html and CSS schemes, and was "completely detached from the traditional color", being now used by millions of graphic designers worldwide. Interestingly, Spacey also lists Imperial Blue (very close to "Indigo" on Louise Myers' color wheel) as a type of indigo, and some of the indigos he gives are greens, https://simplicable.com/colors/indigo https://archive.md/7NI29

See also https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/10/tomato-versus-ff6347-the-tragicomic-history-of-css-color-names/

Because it seems that there are today several different shades ranging from almost-identical-to-violet up to dark blue, perhaps in fairness the best solution is to actually give two or more different hues in the infobox!

--Fh1 (talk) 18:20, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Possible removal from list

Entries in List of colors: A–F contained links to this page.

The entries are :

• Dark imperial blue (#00416A)
• Dark imperial blue (#00147E)
• Imperial blue
• Japanese indigo

I don't see any evidence that these colors are discussed in this article and plan to delete them from the list per this discussion: Talk:List_of_colors#New_approach_to_review_of_entries

If someone decides that these colors should have a section in this article and it is added, I would appreciate a ping.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:41, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Distinguishing indigo from it's neighbors

The following snippet from the current text of the article, makes little sense: "The human eye does not readily differentiate hues in the wavelengths between what are now called blue and violet. If this is where Newton meant indigo to lie, most individuals would have difficulty distinguishing indigo from its neighbors."

I'm not aware that most people have any trouble distinguishing blue from violet. I expect they find it even easier to distinguish cyan (Newton's "blue") from blue (Newton's "indigo"). If this snippet is trying to make some kind of point, it is failing to make it, and it does not give any source. I suggest we strike it. --Ericjs (talk) 01:21, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Historical facts

This is a great starting point but the authors skipped over thousands of years and major civilizations in Africa that pioneered the use of indigo like the Touareg - or how did other nations learn how to cultivate and use indigo - like the anthropologist Ibn Battouta who traveled the world and documented textile dying ..... This article is enthnocentric and bias against many civilizations that participated in the construction of knowledge around Indigo or NILA as is known in Africa — Preceding unsigned comment added by Evebrocart (talk • contribs) 17:10, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

"Color wheel blue"

This article repeatedly refers to a shade of blue called "color wheel blue" and links to blue for that, but there's no discussion of that shade or concept at the linked article. Color wheel is no help either. Color term is a good and helpful article but does not help me sort out what was meant by this. Ccrrccrr (talk) 23:32, 20 July 2023 (UTC)