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Question

ANSI Z535.1 Safety Colors in Frame

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
February 21, 2011
4 replies
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Frame 7.1 Solaris (Frame 9 Win7 available).

Although the manuals I work on are print-published only in grayscale (600 dpi bitmap, actually), we make them available on the web as PDFs (which could be in color). At some point in the future, we may publish in color (probably using Xerox or HP laser engines).

For recent works, we've been using color, where convenient, and just leaving it enabled in the PDFs. For lack of a more compelling model, the color space chosen is sRGB. Those users exposed to color are most likely viewing the PDF on a computer, or printing it on their own inkjet or color laser printer.

A portion of the color content is graphic panels for DANGER/WARNING/CAUTION/NOTICE, and representation of product decals and labels of those same hazard classes.

The dominant market is U.S. domestic, so we follow ANSI standards for these admonishments. The ANSI standards include color specifications (ANSI Z535.1-2006) for safety notcies. The colors used in our manuals are only Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue at present.

Z535.1 specifies these colors in Munsell HVC and CIE 1931 xyY illuminant C coordinates. Most of the ANSI colors are out of gamut for sRGB.

The ANSI colors are realisable as printable spot colors on decals and product labels, but ANSI did not address how to render them in typical document printing. (Actually, the spec claims to provide Pantone equivalents, but does not.)

So, the spec colors can't be matched in normal printing from a random PDF viewer to a random color printer.

Well, we can at least pick something and be consistent, so the safety colors all have the same appearance within our documents, and perhaps match hue to safety spec.

Frame's color library, the Munsell Library of Colors or the Munsell High Chroma, has some of the Munsell values for ANSI patches, but they look awful, probably due to the [unspecified] choice of rendering intent in the mapping of library colors to the RGB/CMYK/HLS values actually used. And, of course, Frame has no color management to speak of, so the RGB/CMYK/HLS values are uncalibrated.

There may exist professional tables of Munsell/sRGB matchings (rit.edu's Munsell lab seems to have misplaced theirs during their web revamp), but this has a similar problem: what was the rendering intent during the mapping? Typically, conversions try to preserve some color difference between nearby out-of-gamut colors. I don't care about that. I want to get as close as possible to the ANSI colors in sRGB space, and I want to at least match hue (no "blue turns purple").

Any number of web sites purport to have RGB values for these colors, but they are even more vague about how they arrived at them, so they usually disagree from one site to the next.

There are lots of tools that perform CIE to sRGB conversions, but they are similarly challenged in the matter of intent (plus whether they accounted for the wandering of hue as you attempt to scale chroma in models other than Munsell).

What I probably need is the limiting sRGB value of the same hue as the Munsell value for the ANSI spec color.

Using BabelColor, I experimented with sRGB values until I could obtain:

* a match for the Hue

* a match (or a within-ANSI-tolerance) for Value.

* as close as possible for Chroma.

What I came up with is at the end of this post.

These colors will be entering the manuals as objects from Photoshop and Illustrator primarily, typically RGB EPS images, tagged as sRGB with embedded profiles. Some might be created in Frame directly, and as long as:

"Tag Everything for Color Management"

with a working space of:
sRGB IEC61966-2.1

is specified during Distiller, the resulting colors in PDF seem to match regardless of source.

What is everyone else doing about this?

Z535.1.Blue _________________
ANSI Munsell: 2.5PB 3.5 / 10
Nearest sRGB: 2.5PB 3.5 / 7.9
RGB(255):     000   089   137
RGB(100%)     0.0 34.9 53.7

Z535.1.Orange ________________
ANSI Munsell: 5.0YR 6.0 / 15
Nearest sRGB: 5.0YR 6.0 / 12.7
RGB(255):     222   125   000
RGB(100%)    87.0 49.0   0.0

Z535.1.Red ___________________
ANSI Munsell: 7.5R 4.0 / 14
Nearest sRGB: 7.5R 4.0 / 13.6
RGB(255):     187   039   036
RGB(100%)    73.3 15.3 14.1

Z535.1.Yellow ________________
ANSI Munsell: 5.0Y 8.0 / 12
Nearest sRGB: 5.0Y 8.1 / 11.6
RGB(255):     239   203   000
RGB(100%)    93.7 79.6   0.0
_______

Values harmonized for ISO 3864-1:2002 would be nice too.

Formatting and numbering

This topic has been closed for replies.

Bob_Niland

Author

Community Expert

re: Values harmonized for ISO 3864-1:2002 would be nice too.

With this old thread revived, it's worth noting that the current ANSI Z535.1 is now ANSI Z535.1-2017. According to their blog, it was revised to harmonize more with ISO, and specifically adopted the 49 CFR §172.407(d)(5) and 172.519(3) Pantone® colors (although as the same numbers "C" (coated) whereas CFR says "U" (uncoated).

The blog also has a document claiming "Annex C contains color cross-reference tables which include the Munsell notation, a PANTONE number, C-M-Y-K percentages, and an RGB formula for each ANSI and ISO safety color."

"RGB", without qualification, is useless. If they meant some color-managed RGB system, like AdobeRGB or sRGB, they might have said so. Anyway, having no projects requiring safety colors, I don't plan to spend US$132.84 to find out that they dropped the ball.

And FM still has no color management, so you must continue to either implement all safety colors as graphics import formats tagged for color management, or use RGB color model, and tag downstream in the PDF workflow.

Bob_Niland

Author

Community Expert

There may exist professional tables of Munsell/sRGB matchings (rit.edu's Munsell lab seems to have misplaced theirs during their web revamp), ...

RIT's sRGB map has reappeared, at:
http://www.cis.rit.edu/research/mcsl2/online/real_sRGB.xls

...but this has a similar problem: what was the rendering intent during the mapping?

And, alas, the question doesn't arise in their spreadsheet, because they only mapped the Munsell colors that are in gamut for sRGB.

For the ANSI safety colors of interest to me, that only includes red, and the values they give are close enough to what I estimated that I'm staying with my values.

F

feline_1973

Inspiring

I was googling this exact same question today, two years on. Disappointed to see that no real definitive answer got given! Why doesn't FrameMaker have built-in presets for these colours? It's such a basic requirement!

F

feline_1973

Inspiring

Also, do Windows 7 and 8 really still use the "GDI" imaging API from Windows 3.0? Still? In the year 2013? I'm skeptical.....

Bob_Niland

Author

Community Expert

Continuing to poke around on this, I see that the U.S.DOT, at:
http://phmsa.dot.gov/hazmat/training/publications
suggests:

Therefore, printed copies of the DOT Chart 14 from your laser printer may not accurately represent the required colors of markings and hazard warning labels and placard set forth in 49 CFR §172.407(d)(5) and 172.519(3).

Pantone® Color matching System (PMS) may be used to achieve the required colors:

Red, PMS 186U;

Orange, PMS 151U;

Yellow, PMS 109U;

Green, PMS 335U;

Blue, PMS 285U; and

Purple, PMS 259U.

I haven't yet experimented to see if Frame's CVU library gets closer to ANSI spec than my earlier empirical sRGBs.

A few sites, such as DOT and NFPA, do make some attempt to mimic true safety colors in their documents, but they rarely match each other.

Most authors seem to just jam the colors to RGB or CYMK primaries, which means the hues are not correct (apart from being out of gamut for some rendering paths). Safety hues are very carefully selected colors. To train the correct recognition and response in users, getting as close as possible to treu safety colors is a worthwhile effort.

V

Van Kurtz

Inspiring

Internally, FrameMaker uses RGB (CMYK colors created in FrameMaker are converted to RGB), but only for the things it creates, such as text. If your color is in the graphics, create them in Illustrator (or other drawing program) in CMYK, using the PMS as needed. THen save them in eps. When FrameMaker prints a document with imported by reference eps files, it simply passes them through to the print output. Then you can deal with the color in the PDF.

If you need colored text in FrameMaker that matches the CMYK, you can try creating your own inks for FrameMaker to use. Even though you have to specify the RGB, you can do it to a high degree of accuracy. If you search this forum, there should be some discussions about it.

Bob_Niland

Author

Community Expert

Internally, FrameMaker uses RGB (CMYK colors created in FrameMaker are converted to RGB), but only for the things it creates, such as text. If your color is in the graphics, create them in Illustrator (or other drawing program) in CMYK, using the PMS as needed. Then save them in eps.

Thanks, but I'm very familiar with the difficulty of matching Frame CMYK colors to imported CMYK colors on pre-Vista Windows. Is Frame still jamming to RGB in later versions on Windows that support CMYK?

In this case, however, CMYK is not the target. sRGB is the target, since we don't print in color, and the main place users will see the color is on-screen. It does appear to be possible to get EPS RGB and Frame RGB colors to match using certain workflow settings. The main question in the thread is how to mimic the various ANSI colors in sRGB space.

If you need colored text in FrameMaker that matches the CMYK, ...

Fortunately, I don't.

In the case of the DOT, the safety colors specified in the regulations match the ANSI colors exactly in Munsell values (for central colors; the tolerance colors are specified differently). In the DOT “Chart 14” PDF, for example, they are using their own Pantone equivalents mentioned above.

The document appears to have been created in Quark. The label/placard images are specified as named Pantone spot colors. When opened for edit in Illustrator, they come up as CMYK, but I don't seem to have a tool that reports what, if any profile is used. So obtaining an sRGB readout introduces the variables of the CMYK-RGB conversion being done, and whether any profile is being applied or preserved.

Using the Frame Pantone CVU numbers has similar problems. So for the moment, I'm staying with the sRGB values created experimentally by approaching the Munsell values in sRGB space in BabelColor.

M

Mike Wickham

Inspiring

"Tag Everything for Color Management"

I can't tell you anything about the Munsell colors, but you might want

to check that setting for color management. It seems like I had set that

once and all my black text came out as RGB text, instead of K. For the

Web, that would be no big deal, but for printing it sets up fuzzy text

problems from misaligned ink layers. You might want to use "Tag Only

Images for Color Management" instead. In Acrobat X, you can check the

text using View> Tools> Print Production> Output Preview, and then hover

your cursor over the text to see what inks are being used.

Bob_Niland

Author

Community Expert

> ... and all my black text came out as RGB text, instead of K.

Sure enough, it's composite black. That might also explain a printing performance problem using that setting.

> You might want to use "Tag Only Images for Color Management"

I hadn't noticed that option, but since I don't need color managed color text, that's the thing to do.

Thanks. The question about optimal sRGB values for safety colors remains open.

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