Emira production is underway

[Leonard]

Oh come on Mr Grumpy Pants lol

That was my one slip/strike

 

[VL3X]

As I've said before, Lotus are losing control of how these colours are presented online and in print by not publishing their own pictures. It therefore means these leaks and poor quality images are all that people can rely on beyond the configurator.

Their approach seems to be "it's too hard to do decent photos of them so we will just release the configurator". It doesn't make sense, as photos are going to come anyway. They'd have been better off taking hundreds of pictures in different lighting conditions and showing how much the colours vary.

What ever happened to paper car brochures? When I worked at Lexus I remember beautiful detailed brochures available for each model and the color pallet pages includes samples that looked identical to the actual paint... there were even interior swatches. . and this was in the late 90s/early 2000s!! How is it 2022 and Lotus can't provide accurate photos?

 

[NicolasB]

Has anyone called customer service lately and demanded an answer (or timeline) for photos of colors?

 

[Eagle7]

What ever happened to paper car brochures? When I worked at Lexus I remember beautiful detailed brochures available for each model and the color pallet pages includes samples that looked identical to the actual paint... there were even interior swatches. . and this was int he late 90s/early 2000s!! How is it 2022 and Lotus can't provide accurate photos?

There's a big difference between being able to control the color accuracy of a printed piece which gives you an analog representation, versus digital which should have, but doesn't have much accuracy control at all. Cell phones can do some amazing things with their small cameras, but not all cell phones are alike, and that's the majority of the cameras that are going to be used to take photos nowadays. All cell phones process the color and light dynamics before you see the image. Some allow you to see the image in raw format without that processing, but doing your own color adjustments on a raw format image isn't something that the average person knows about. Most don't care either, it's just point and shoot and that's good enough.

Once the phone has it, now there's different methods of storage formats that can be used to store it, which can change things slightly. Then you have the device it's being transferred to, usually a computer, that has its own processing it does on it. From there it goes to a web browser, all of which also have their own methods of handling color, and after all that, people see it on whatever device they're using to view it. Those devices also have their own methods of processing color and they're not all the same.

The advantage of digital is instant gratification; point, shoot, upload, worldwide distribution within minutes. True color accuracy is the compromise, but for most people and in most situations, that's not a big deal. For true color accuracy, there isn't a truly accurate, reliable single standard of handling images and color across all these devices and mediums of representing color at this time. Hopefully in the future there will be a much closer method that's universal, but for now, everything digital is an approximation. They can be good, sometimes very good, but it's the consistency that publishers don't have control over, like they do with printed materials. Printed pieces are also expensive, and that's a factor too. I had a graphics business for 15 years, and on the wall I had a sign that said "Time, Quality, Price; pick any two". That reality is still true today.

 

[jmn444]

Even if you throw accuracy out the window.... how many photos have they released of yellow/gray/green/red? 1 MAY be misleading, 20 probably would give a good enough sample to make a decision with, but ZERO is useless.

 

[Eagle7]

Even if you throw accuracy out the window.... how many photos have they released of yellow/gray/green/red? 1 MAY be misleading, 20 probably would give a good enough sample to make a decision with, but ZERO is useless.

I agree they should do something, even if they have to put a disclaimer with it. Something would at least give us an idea, while nothing leaves it up to our imagination.

 

[VL3X]

Even if you throw accuracy out the window.... how many photos have they released of yellow/gray/green/red? 1 MAY be misleading, 20 probably would give a good enough sample to make a decision with, but ZERO is useless.

Exactly.. let a bunch of people with camera phones and/or pro equipment take pics and post them all over social media. We'll get a better idea of the colors by looking at multiple photos with different cameras, filters, and lighting anyway.

For instance.. go on Instagram and look up #senecablue and you'll find ~100 photos. #hethelyellow will give you a few dozen results too. Now imagine if we had the same for all 6 of these FE colors.

 

[jmn444]

It was made even worse by all the cars apparently painted with unused evora colors, which makes sense financially, but makes guessing what the real cars will look like or if what we see is a real color very tough!

oh well, in short order we will see plenty of cars as deliveries start, but that doesn't help the "lucky" ones that have to commit soon!

 

[Porter]

There's a big difference between being able to control the color accuracy of a printed piece which gives you an analog representation, versus digital which should have, but doesn't have much accuracy control at all. Cell phones can do some amazing things with their small cameras, but not all cell phones are alike, and that's the majority of the cameras that are going to be used to take photos nowadays. All cell phones process the color and light dynamics before you see the image. Some allow you to see the image in raw format without that processing, but doing your own color adjustments on a raw format image isn't something that the average person knows about. Most don't care either, it's just point and shoot and that's good enough.

Once the phone has it, now there's different methods of storage formats that can be used to store it, which can change things slightly. Then you have the device it's being transferred to, usually a computer, that has its own processing it does on it. From there it goes to a web browser, all of which also have their own methods of handling color, and after all that, people see it on whatever device they're using to view it. Those devices also have their own methods of processing color and they're not all the same.

The advantage of digital is instant gratification; point, shoot, upload, worldwide distribution within minutes. True color accuracy is the compromise, but for most people and in most situations, that's not a big deal. For true color accuracy, there isn't a truly accurate, reliable single standard of handling images and color across all these devices and mediums of representing color at this time. Hopefully in the future there will be a much closer method that's universal, but for now, everything digital is an approximation. They can be good, sometimes very good, but it's the consistency that publishers don't have control over, like they do with printed materials. Printed pieces are also expensive, and that's a factor too. I had a graphics business for 15 years, and on the wall I had a sign that said "Time, Quality, Price; pick any two". That reality is still true today.

Come on, this is overstating the problem. Color management exists for a reason, and the manufacturers of most consumer devices have sorted out their built-in display profiles (particularly on mobile devices) to get something resembling neutral color rendering to the screen even if the saturation is sometimes driven a bit higher than needed.

Professional cameras (and many consumer cameras) have their own internal color profiles for RAW capture and conversion that are unique to the particular sensor to provide reasonably neutral rendering balance across their achievable color gamut, and pro photographers further calibrate their captured images using a physical color standard, usually a certified gray card in the scene. Together these two measures fully correct the color accuracy of the particular image in the captured conditions as best as is possible for a particular camera's inherent capture technology. None are perfect, but most are very very close.

Then in post-production editing, color accuracy is governed in the editing platform by color space profiles (ProPhoto RGB, Adobe RGB, etc) all the way through the chain, until the image is exported from the editor for final target purpose such as print or digital. If destined for screen/digital, typically the image is downmixed to sRGB (most common) or P3 (recent screen-focused devices from Apple, Samsung, Google, etc), or both and presented differentially depending on detected device.

The outcomes are extremely predictable, consistent, and perceptually accurate for 95% of reasonable observers. The fields of print and digital marketing could literally not function if this were not the case. Pantone would be out of business.

 

[frazzer]

There's a big difference between being able to control the color accuracy of a printed piece which gives you an analog representation, versus digital which should have, but doesn't have much accuracy control at all. Cell phones can do some amazing things with their small cameras, but not all cell phones are alike, and that's the majority of the cameras that are going to be used to take photos nowadays. All cell phones process the color and light dynamics before you see the image. Some allow you to see the image in raw format without that processing, but doing your own color adjustments on a raw format image isn't something that the average person knows about. Most don't care either, it's just point and shoot and that's good enough.

Once the phone has it, now there's different methods of storage formats that can be used to store it, which can change things slightly. Then you have the device it's being transferred to, usually a computer, that has its own processing it does on it. From there it goes to a web browser, all of which also have their own methods of handling color, and after all that, people see it on whatever device they're using to view it. Those devices also have their own methods of processing color and they're not all the same.

The advantage of digital is instant gratification; point, shoot, upload, worldwide distribution within minutes. True color accuracy is the compromise, but for most people and in most situations, that's not a big deal. For true color accuracy, there isn't a truly accurate, reliable single standard of handling images and color across all these devices and mediums of representing color at this time. Hopefully in the future there will be a much closer method that's universal, but for now, everything digital is an approximation. They can be good, sometimes very good, but it's the consistency that publishers don't have control over, like they do with printed materials. Printed pieces are also expensive, and that's a factor too. I had a graphics business for 15 years, and on the wall I had a sign that said "Time, Quality, Price; pick any two". That reality is still true today.

Can't change the physics, the colour you see is just the light that reflects back. That's the same on paper as it is in the metal. So it depends on the environment. DV will look different in California to how it looks on the East coast of Scotland. The more you delve into colour the more you realise how little fragile the whole notion is.

I'm a B&W photographer and darkroom printer, it's hard enough just working in monochrome ! the way the print looks completely depends on the lighting and this has caught me out many times.

It's actually easier on screen, most people are viewing on a phone and images can be calibrated accordingly with profiles. Though environmental light still has an impact.

 

[Eagle7]

Come on, this is overstating the problem. Color management exists for a reason, and the manufacturers of most consumer devices have sorted out their built-in display profiles (particularly on mobile devices) to get something resembling neutral color rendering to the screen even if the saturation is sometimes driven a bit higher than needed.

Professional cameras (and many consumer cameras) have their own internal color profiles for RAW capture and conversion that are unique to the particular sensor to provide reasonably neutral rendering balance across their achievable color gamut, and pro photographers further calibrate their captured images using a physical color standard, usually a certified gray card in the scene. Together these two measures fully correct the color accuracy of the particular image in the captured conditions as best as is possible for a particular camera's inherent capture technology. None are perfect, but most are very very close.

Then in post-production editing, color accuracy is governed in the editing platform by color space profiles (ProPhoto RGB, Adobe RGB, etc) all the way through the chain, until the image is exported from the editor for final target purpose such as print or digital. If destined for screen/digital, typically the image is downmixed to sRGB (most common) or P3 (recent screen-focused devices from Apple, Samsung, Google, etc), or both and presented differentially depending on detected device.

The outcomes are extremely predictable, consistent, and perceptually accurate for 95% of reasonable observers. The fields of print and digital marketing could literally not function if this were not the case. Pantone would be out of business.

They're predictable, but I wouldn't use the word extreme. It's good, but as you said at best it would be 95%. Not every one has color corrected accurate profiles on their devices. Your statement "...something resembling neutral color rendering to the screen even if the saturation is sometimes driven a bit higher than needed" is pretty much what I was alluding to. "Something resembling" is not the same as a professionally printed image. Every screen on every individual device is also capable of having it's brightness adjusted by the user, which has an effect on the color dynamics as well.

I'm well aware of the color standards, having worked in the industry for 15 years, which is why I posted what I did. I've spent a lot of time trying to compensate for color brightness and accuracy on the renders I've done, and what the web browser is showing, versus what the program that created them shows, and this is on my same computer I created the renders on. Even if both programs are set for the sRGB colorspace there's a difference.

The Pantone system was developed to provide a way for printers to accurately reproduce printed color, but there's a difference between process color, and actual ink colors. In addition, those colors reproduce differently depending on what type of stock they're printed on. With a printed piece, once it's printed, it is what it is. The only reason the color would change is if it fades over time, or due to sun exposure. With digital there's a constant shuffle of variables that can change color fidelity just enough, to be misleading. This was why the Pantone system for printing was developed in the first place, to guarantee color fidelity on various mediums, especially for business purposes; company logos and corporate brand colors as well as artistic photos.

If people are making color choice decisions based on cell phone images, just be advised the actual car is going to look different than what a cell phone shows.

 

[Leonard]

I'm a B&W photographer and darkroom printer, it's hard enough just working in monochrome ! the way the print looks completely depends on the lighting and this has caught me out many times.

It's actually easier on screen, most people are viewing on a phone and images can be calibrated accordingly with profiles. Though environmental light still has an impact.

I'd take black and white photos of the 5 colours at this stage

 

[Eagle7]

Can't change the physics, the colour you see is just the light that reflects back. That's the same on paper as it is in the metal. So it depends on the environment. DV will look different in California to how it looks on the East coast of Scotland. The more you delve into colour the more you realise how little fragile the whole notion is.

I'm a B&W photographer and darkroom printer, it's hard enough just working in monochrome ! the way the print looks completely depends on the lighting and this has caught me out many times.

It's actually easier on screen, most people are viewing on a phone and images can be calibrated accordingly with profiles. Though environmental light still has an impact.

So very true. There's also a difference in screen technology, LED versus OLED versus mini-LED, etc. Each of those technologies reproduce color in slightly different ways. Some are brighter than others, some more saturated, some are able to reproduce more of the color space than others, and that can vary slightly per individual screen depending on quality control in manufacturing.

What we have today for screens and technology is better than it ever was, but still not perfect. It keeps improving, but there's an ever-increasing level of difficulty the closer you get to 100%. It's harder and takes more effort to go from 90-100% than it does to go from 0-90%.

However, sitting and playing Gran Turismo 7 on my Playstation 5 I'm just amazed at what we have today though. The color, detail and lighting I'm seeing is like a science fiction dream come true. It's better than the multi-million dollar simulators NASA and the military used to have. I've looked at 8k versus 4k screens, and with the right demo content, you can see the improvements 8k offers, and I know they're working on 16k, crazy as it sounds. With the Playstation 5, we're almost at the interactive motion picture level. After seeing the processing numbers for the new Mac Studio, it won't be long before we're there.

 

[EspritGuy]

I'd take black and white photos of the 5 colours at this stage

A truly desperate move, but be happy for the white and black.

 

[Maverick1]

I feel bad for those purchasing FE cars, not really knowing what their car color will truly look like.
There are going to be some very disappointed gents, who will now be stuck with colors they never chose or wanted.
Dream crushed.
Most have commented that those who are in the FE group of buyers, lucked out.
In the end it may be the patient buyers who will not only be able to see their chosen colors in the flesh, but also be able to test drive the Emira before deciding on their final specs, who are truly the lucky ones.
I just hope all of you early FE buyers end up loving your Emiras.

 

[NicolasB]

I find myself on Autotrader looking at lightly used V8 Vantages... frustrating.

 

[Davebeats]

I feel bad for those purchasing FE cars, not really knowing what their car color will truly look like.
There are going to be some very disappointed gents, who will now be stuck with colors they never chose or wanted.
Dream crushed.
Most have commented that those who are in the FE group of buyers, lucked out.
In the end it may be the patient buyers who will not only be able to see their chosen colors in the flesh, but also be able to test drive the Emira before deciding on their final specs, who are truly the lucky ones.
I just hope all of you early FE buyers end up loving your Emiras.

Hopefully they were lucky enough to be at dealers that had the tour and either the car or paint discs

 

[kratedisease]

I find myself on Autotrader looking at lightly used V8 Vantages... frustrating.

Blasphemy

 

[TXEMIRA]

Hopefully they were lucky enough to be at dealers that had the tour and either the car or paint discs

OR…
OR…
Lucky enough to flip the b!tch with low miles and that very expensive badge for a profit and reinvest in a base with the color of their choice.

Mentioning this for a friend.

 

[jmn444]

OR…
OR…
Lucky enough to flip the b!tch with low miles and that very expensive badge for a profit and reinvest in a base with the color of their choice.

Mentioning this for a friend.

that's a very good point, IF the market supports it!