I based the color information on the book "Luftwaffe Colours 1935-1945".
About 50% of the RLM list has RAL equalivants (you can see that). This information comes from a Paintshop handbook released in 1944. So, official documentation. So, all RAL colors are a 1 on 1 match. All other colors are based on research done since the war.
For translating the RAL colors to RGB values I used official RAL software.
So, that should give the colsest match possible.
What is left on how it looks for you are things like the following factors:
- calibration of your computer
- what type of monitor you use (standard CRT, Trinitron, TFT etc.)
- game engine (often you need to desaturate / darken the color a bit)
- what have you grown to believe to be the right color/taste
A little example on the last point:
Because the Fokker D.XXI in a museum is painted in a scheme where the brown is a bit reddish, a bit like milk chocolate, most people think that is the right color.
Later research based on wreckage learned that the color is much darker and browner, like a pure Chocolate (see my sig).
So, many people who see presentations in this new color, think it is the wrong color.
Another note: Especially scale modellers, and thus also skinners, use modelling sources. These sources allmost allways translate to the Federal Standard. But that is a limited colorlist of some 600 colors devided over matt, silk and gloss. that leaves some 200-250 different colors per gloss variant.
So, those are rarely 1 on 1 matches and in best case a close match.
What that does can you see with the RLM colors that have a RAL match. Look up the FS version in the FS list and see how much they sometimes differ.
Also the Russian colorlist is based on research by
Erik Pilawskii and not the common accepted FS match. Take a look at those colors and look up the FS version. See the differences...
Basicly the Generally accepted Federal Standard is very good for many NATO colors and also for many USA colors during WW2. For all other colors I prefer to find better comparisations. For Germany that is RAL for the UK the British Standard. For other countries it often is very hard and thus often a comparisation with FS or RAL is used.
You can read a bit more about how I came to my colors here:
http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/page-colorindex.html
Differences in all colorlists come due to developping research and disagreements on which FS color matches a color best. That is why I am really happy with the good research that has been done on the German and Russian colors. Especially because they are available in scalable systems like Munsell.
