New Fancy Color Diamond Tutorial

[coati]

We would like to thank you for your interest and contributions to the many threads on fancy color diamonds. We have started this tutorial to provide a permanent home for FCDs on Pricescope. As with all of our educational content, these new pages are works-in-progress, so if you have questions or would like to add information, please use this thread to add your input. Thank you!

Visit the following pages to learn more about Fancy Color Diamonds:

♦ Fancy Color Diamonds - Main
♦ Yellow Diamonds
♦ Brown Diamonds
♦ Pink Diamonds
♦ Blue Diamonds
♦ Green Diamonds
♦ Black Diamonds
♦ Red Diamonds
♦ Orange Diamonds

Special thank you to Pricescope's Forum Community, GIA, Diamonds by Lauren, Leibish & Co., Blue Nile, Garry Holloway, and Leon Megé.

We appreciate your contributions to the Fancy Color Diamond Tutorial!

 

[yennyfire]

What a fantatstic addition to the PS fountain of knowledge! Thanks to PS and all contributors! I know that this encyclopedia of knowledge will benefit many, many people...and the gorgeous eye candy is an added bonus!

 

[marymm]

I love this - thank you PS! Do you think we could include a page for Fancy Grey Diamonds?

 

[kenny]

Wow! Way cool!

Thanks to all who contributed!!!

 

[movie zombie]

 

[coati]

I love this - thank you PS! Do you think we could include a page for Fancy Grey Diamonds?

Absolutely! Adding it to the list. Thanks marymm!

 

[coati]

Wow! Way cool!

Thanks to all who contributed!!!

kenny-thank you for sharing your fantastic images with PS. We appreciate it!

 

[kenny]

Wow! Way cool!

Thanks to all who contributed!!!

kenny-thank you for sharing your fantastic images with PS. We appreciate it!

My pleasure.
I'm so honored you used seven of them.
Lucky number.

 

[acebruin]

thanks for putting them together! should these colors be added?

- grey
- purple
- violet
- chameleon
- white

very cool tutorial... love the gallery section!

 

[coati]

Wow! Way cool!

Thanks to all who contributed!!!

kenny-thank you for sharing your fantastic images with PS. We appreciate it!

My pleasure.
I'm so honored you used seven of them.
Lucky number.

...and they are spectacular in person!

 

[coati]

thanks for putting them together! should these colors be added?

- grey
- purple
- violet
- chameleon
- white

very cool tutorial... love the gallery section!

Yes indeed, and thank you for the suggestions, acebruin. A page on chameleons is in the works, and we will be adding the other pages as we go. Also thank you for sharing your lovely FCD pieces on the forum!

 

[acebruin]

my pleasure! i'm glad to see more of colored diamonds on PS... it used to be very lonely for me a couple of years back... we need to see more colored diamonds!

 

[kenny]

As with all of our educational content, these new pages are works-in-progress, so if you have questions or would like to add information, please use this thread to add your input. Thank you!

Under the Red section...

All hues except Red come in all nine of GIA's Saturation/Tone grades from Faint to Fancy Deep.
Red is the only hue that comes in only one Saturation/Tone grade, Fancy Red; other grades of this hue will be pink.

 

[acebruin]

speaking of colors... not to thread jack or anything, kenny don't you wish this was half the size?

http://www.fancydiamonds.net/view_diamonds/5980.htm

would be great example for the gallery section of purple diamond...

 

[acebruin]

that GIA color grading scale would be perfect on the main page!

 

[coati]

As with all of our educational content, these new pages are works-in-progress, so if you have questions or would like to add information, please use this thread to add your input. Thank you!

Under the Red section...

All hues except Red come in all nine of GIA's Saturation/Tone grades from Faint to Fancy Deep.
Red is the only hue that comes in only one Saturation/Tone grade, Fancy Red; other grades of this hue will be pink.

Great graphic-we will add that to the main page.

To clarify, GIA indicated that not all hues are labeled with the nine saturation/tone grades. Fancy black diamonds are noted only as "Fancy Black" and fancy browns are graded as Fancy Light Brown, Fancy Brown, Fancy Dark Brown and Fancy Deep Brown with modifying colors.

 

[kenny]

Thanks Erika.

 

[Amys Bling]

Yay!!!

 

[Sky56]

very cool!!

 

[Imdanny]

FCD education and eye-candy all in one place- what a great idea!

Thanks, PS!

 

[DiamondColors]

Hello

This is my small contribution

From left to right:Fancy light, Fancy, Fancy intense, Fancy vivid, Fancy Deep

 

[kenny]

Thanks Dan.
It's very informative to see all those grades side by side.

One question though ... are those 5 separately-take pics that you put side by side (less-useful), or is it one pic taken of all 5 diamonds at the same time (more-useful)?

Your pic compared Saturation/Tone, but not hue.
What I would REALLY love is if a vendor would demonstrate how much the hue itself can vary in the exact same GIA grade.
For instance nature provides us with yellow diamonds that come with 4 secondary modifying hues, Brown, Green, Orange and Gray.
If there is enough of that hue modifier GIA will grade it, say, Brownish Yellow, or Greenish Yellow.
But if there isn't enough modifier GIA will grade it (pure) Yellow, even though there is SOME modifier.

I'd love it if a vendor with a large inventory of yellows would take one special picture for us.
Find four diamonds that graded by GIA as "PURE" Yellow, but exhibiting the largest amount of only one of these four modifiers.
Take one pic of all four of them placed side by side.
Please do NOT use Photoshop to put your four existing individually-taken pics side by side.
Even with the exact same photography set up the color may vary slightly since lamps change color as they warm up.

They could all four be Fancy Yellow, Fancy Intense Yellow or Fancy Vivid Yellow, though all four should be the same GIA Saturation/Tone grade.

It would also would be great to see the same test-pic with Pink diamonds that GIA graded as "pure" Pink but that have a tinge of the modifiers orange, brown and purple.
I realize this would be much more difficult since Pink is so much more rare than Yellow.

One reason I'd love to see this is to help dispel the myth that all, say, Fancy Intense Yellows are equally valuable if all other specs are the same.
The GIA "pure" Yellows with more green will be worth more than the ones with more Brown making price comparisons of FCDs with the same GIA color grade problematic.

 

[kenny]

FWIW, GIA sells two charts, one for Yellow and one for Pink diamonds.
I bought both but the quality of the colors in their large printing run was so poor they are nearly useless.

The charts differ from what I am requesting in that they present ALL of the Saturation/Tone grades - I'm hoping for multiple diamonds in ONE Saturation/Tone grade.
In GIA's charts there are some grades with more than one diamond but it looks like they chose them for Saturation/Tone variation, not hue variation, like I'm requesting.

http://store.gia.edu/product_p/chartpink.htm

 

[Rockdiamond]

Very interesting thought Kenny.
Personally, I don't find many stones with the grade of Fancy Yellow that have a lot of brown, orange, or green modifiers visible.
When we get to Fancy intense, if the stone is closer to vivid, and of course in the grade of Fancy Vivid Yellow, Orange is a real possibly- and in some cases, not a very desirable orange.
Fluorescence may have something to do with this in many cases.
Fluorescence may also cause a greenish tint.

One of the very interesting parts of this is that if a diamond is a desirable Fancy Intense Orange Yellow, for example, it may be worth a lot more than a "straight" intense. Same for a GIA declared Green modifier.
But an intense that may have a less desirable orange tint, not declared in the GIA grade, may trade for significantly less than a nice "pure" Intense Yellow.

Some of what an artist may see may not be visible to others- color sensitivity is not equal for all of us- and some are gifted with far more sensitivity to subtle modifiers in shade.

Your last point about price comparison by grade being ineffectual is very also true due to the fact that there's a large range of intensity within the GIA grades. A Fancy Intense Yellow that just missed making Fancy Vivid Yellow looks like a totally different animal as compared to a stone that was just saturated enough to surpass Fancy Yellow, and attain the "Fancy Intense Yellow "grade from GIA.

Nice pics Dan!

 

[DiamondColors]

Hello Kenny

The picture is of 5 diamonds that were taken separately, but, they were all taken when the camera was set in the same manner for light exposure etc'. I believe the color difference is very accurate in these pictures, but i will take one that they are all side by side.
Very important to mention that fancy intense yellow is leaning a bit towards the green tones and the fancy vivid a bit to the orange tones.

Regarding the second issue: I believe i can cover part of your request especially with green-yellow and brown-yellow color mixes, since we have nice inventory here. I will start working on this in the next few days..