Riddle me this: When you reach rock bottom what do you do?

...You start to dig.

And Neill Gorton has got out his pneumatic drill and has started digging in earnest.

I've just spent the past half hour driving myself back to the office and my workstation when I could have been tucked up at home, in bed with the wife. Either I'm very sad or very dedicated - the Missus thinks I'm the former, but she feels the same way about LV handbags so guess we are a very sad couple. Still, I wanted to run some analysis on Photoshop as per Neill Gorton's subsequent posts here:

"Take the pic of the sonic and laser and drag it in to photoshop. Put the eyedropper over the crackles and see what colour pops up. They're completely different. Sonic shows as shades of green, laser shows as shades of grey. Do it an at least ten spots to account for the variations on the surface. These are two objects in the same image that it has been said are painted with the same paint. They clearly haven't. If you think they're the same then frankly you either need a new monitor or need your eyes checking.

The wires are obscured by the fact the perspex has been bored out incorrectly which has misted the plastic. Again, do the eyedropper and you will get yellow reading through.

This is fact, and I'm showing you facts, but if you prefer the fantasy then go right ahead and believe what you want.

If you can't be bothered to do this check in photoshop (or pretty much any other photo software with a colour eyedropper) then you really shouldn't be posting.

Enjoy"

and here:

"David actually has three of mine, with heritage gold finish, that I gave him while we were filming the Catherine Tate Xmas special back in early November. He loved them and thought they were spot on!

I also have three which David signed for me with a Sharpie on top of the Heritage Gold crackle finish. I like to collect the odd little souvenir. Russell T also has one, and Julie Gardner, I gave them theirs at the screening of the last episode at BBC TV centre in late December. Nick Robatto has one I gave him too as thanks for all his help with reference material. Strangely none of these people ever questioned the colour... Hmmm. can you guess why that is?

Regarding the laser not being in question. The point was if the crackle on the laser is the cream colour plastikote and it's different than the paint on the sonic int he same image then what colour is the sonic if you have all of three colours in the plasti-kote range to choose from; cream, black and heritage gold....?

...I'll help you there. It's NOT Cream, it's clearly NOT black so it must be.......... Heritage gold anyone?

Anyone tried the photoshop test yet?"

Ok Neill, you asked for it.

Here's the protocol: I am taking a color from a single random point on the alleged 'Heritage Gold' sonic body within the pic which is then displayed as an RGB value on the right hand side. Both points are circled in red. I then do the same with the ridged end of the Laser screwdriver which is known to be painted in Colony Cream.

The results are simultaneously unsurprising and surprising:

As the above analysis shows from various points taken across the two props - in shadow, in light and in-between, the values don't deviate much in the RGB. From a few points up to about 28ish (I don't know the EXACT amount as I can't be bothered to tot up the exact figure)  - Basically, not very much variation across Red, Green and Blue and certainly not enough to warrant it being a completely different color. Not convinced? Unless you are a total moron this should convince you:

What I have done is taken a reading of the white paper, a color that we are not disputing the color of, to show that even across a single color, shadow, lighting and angle can give differing RGB values. However the point I am trying to make is that even though there can be a thirty point discrepancy in color value, it does not change the color. On the above white analysis, the values differ around 30-40 points and even on the Blue values between point 1 and point 2 above, the Blue value differs by 72 points! But you won't have Gorton arguing that the paper has been painted in different shades of white!

Even the paint on the same prop differs in value across different points. See here on the sonic:

There is an approximate 40 point difference in the RGB values between the two points of the same color on the prop! What's Gorton going to do? Argue that the sonic is now painted two different colors simultaneously?

So what does this analysis show? Well, it shows that the laser screwdriver and sonic are probably painted in the same or similar color. What this ABSOLUTELY proves is that they are not widely different colours as Heritage Gold is from Colony Cream.

So why is there even any disparety between the paint on the Laser screwdriver and the paint on the sonic? Very easy answer: The angle of the ridges on the laser for one. There is no horizontal surface on the ridges so you end up with stark light or shadowy areas. The other reason is I don't think the laser screwdriver is clearcoated!!! I know this for a fact. Clearcoating darkens and greys out Colony Cream. Here's a pic of my unclearcoated prototype from last year:

And here's a pic of a clearcoated production model. The only difference to the paint is the clearcoat:

Quite some difference, eh?

What of the photo Gorton posted of the yellowy sonic? Well, here's the answer:

I took a look at the RGB histogram of this pic. The first thing you will notice is a hump  in the middle which tells us that the pic is generally quite well exposed with the light well balanced. But the second thing you will notice is clipping on the red channel on the far right. Basically, there's a lot of red in the pic, probably through overexposure of the red.  This tells us that the picture is lit by artificial light giving too much redness and warmth to the pic.  There is also a shift in the Blue histogram toward the yellow (left) hand side and on the green this is also heavy on the left suggesting a shift in intensity towards magenta. All this means that the sonic in the pic is too yellow!!!!!!!!

What happens when you adjust that red saturation?. This:

Turn up the brightness a little to match a smilar brightness of the original pic and this happens:

You end up with a grubby, but definitely Colony Cream flavored sonic.

I've since done some tweaking of the levels having examined the histograms and this is what I believe is the final color under daylight. It preserves the original's light levels and overall saturation/hue but adjusts it to account for red brightness so the colours remain truer (see the flesh of the hand and you will see I haven't messed around too much with the levels, merely adjusted red intensity and corrected the contrast and brightness levels without altering hue and saturation to any significant degree):

Anyone with Photoshop is perfectly free to check these findings themselves.

I bet Gorton wishes he'd never issued the challenge, doesn't he?