Does anyone here have any insight as to why images are so different when researching for a particular daylily. I am searching through a website daylily list and looking up images and info on daylilies. Some of course have only one image on the data base on this site . Others , however , have multiple images many of which do not share the same color for that particular daylily. So I guess my question is this : Does ph of the soil affect how a daylily manifests its colors like a hydrangea does? An example of this is if you check the images for the daylily H. Icicles. Some are pink, some more peachyish, some have a mauve cast to the pic of the bloom. I am of course understanding that lighting and camera settings may have some effect ,but how does one tell which of these is the real color of the bloom

I think camera and light trump soil conditions. I also think that there is no such thing as "the real color."

As an exaggerated demo of light making a difference, JUST JESSIE, same camera, different lighting conditions;



Cloudy day


Early morning


Midday sun

It is important to remember that we see the color of the light reflected from a petal and not the pigment in or on that petal.

Charley

The same plant will throw up variations on a theme depending on many factors, including temperature. I find that vendors often use the registration pics if their own pics in real life look substandard. So, it is a bad sign if everyone is using the registration pic. That is a sign you probably should not get that daylily.

One example that always jumps out for me is 'Spacecoast White Fang'. Everyone uses the one exact same photo to sell it, or seeds from it. Looking it up here, this is the one photo absolutely everybody uses:

Thankfully, a nice person has posted theirs which is not too different but just does not sparkle like in the first photo:

This is why our database is so very important. It shows what many people actually get in real life over a broad geography and time. It is my first go-to when choosing any daylily.

Also, a more extreme example from my own garden since I had this composite sitting around. The exact same seedling. Sometimes it looks pink with white dots, and sometimes it looks yellow polychrome. You would never guess both looks were from the exact same scape just on different days, right?

signet,
First I always like to read the hybridizers registration description of the plant. In the case of Icicles it reads: Color description: "Ice pink self with a double edge of white with light gold knobs and tentacles." That can sometimes confirm what is shown in the photos. Then I like to look and see if the same person posts two or more photos of the same plant and compare those. Then I look and see if the different looking photos are actually posted by two or more people. Then check the Daylily of the Day thread and see if photos and comments about the plant are posted there.
Interesting that I just checked my only photo of 'Icicles' and brought this up...

So that tells me my plant is marked wrong and I need to do some detective work when this plant blooms this year and see if I can figure out what went wrong.

I ad raised this question in a different thread regarding Diana Gossard's Baby's Got Blue Eyes. She registered it as having a cream white base color, but mine has a saturated orangy peach base color. You can see that in two different photos pasted on this site.

Good advice an knowledge above, folks!

I think we're all members of that "this looks nothing like what the hybridizer claims" club. I've noticed some days when my colors look exactly like the hybridizer's photo and some when yep, you'd think it was a different plant all together. Temperature, time of day, amount of sun, filters (ahem, one hybridizer in particular, it seems) have an impact.

I don't have any photos on my laptop, so nothing to upload. There are plenty of examples here and the database

Rainbow Candy is another one in which the difference in the base color is quite marked at times:



In fact, in the Daylily of the Day thread for this plant, someone asked, "Will the real Rainbow Candy please stand up?"

I suspect soil may have some affect on color, too. In my own garden, Chorus Line's early blooms start out orangey and gradually get pinker over the course of the bloom period, but they are never as pink as the pictures of Chorus Line I see from northern gardens.
These two pictures were taken a week apart:


And this is from Dianne's garden in New York:

This thread is great! There are a lot of variables and I think a biggie is the camera. I love the database here to compare all the pics from different growers. I wish more clump shots were entered to see the foliage and maybe what kind of light the photo was taken in. I need to enter more of those myself. Sometimes the foliage just doesn't look good though.

I agree, Vickie--the camera is a big factor. I have noticed that sometimes the pictures I take don't exactly match what my eye sees as far as color goes.

As for clump shots--I agree; more would be great in the database. I have posted a few, but frankly, most of my plants are too new to have formed clumps. However, this morning, I was just looking at the entry for Condilla for some reason and saw a beautiful clump shot from you! It was so helpful because I can see how much shorter my Condilla is than yours--very informative.

That reminded me that I had not uploaded any photo of Condilla, took care of that. Will try to post more clump shots.

Thanks for the acorn, Lori.

Many of today's cameras automatically "enhance" colors without the photographer even being aware of it. This is particularly true with newer phone cameras. You can turn the enhancing feature off, but most users (including me) don't do this. I was made keenly aware of this when recently I was photographing a sunset with my camera. The photo was beautiful, so I showed it in the moment to those who were with me. My brother said, "That looks a lot better than it really is", and he was right. Although the automatic color enhancement is not purposely deceptive, it does make it hard to compare daylily photos to what we actually get in our gardens.


As others have said, the photos in this database are very valuable. I always consult the photos in the Garden.org database before buying a daylily. A seller can post an stunning photo, but if I look in the database and see other photos of that plant are not as good, I by-pass it.

Also, just for the OP since the rest of us have seen this other thread:
The thread "What in soil causes changing colors?" in Daylilies forum
The thread has lots of interesting photos and graphs, especially on the first page.

I take photos with my iphone but I don't use the standard camera app but instead found an app called camera+ which gives me full control. I always use the white balancing to make sure that the image I take is the image my eye sees when I am doing photo shots of blooms so I capture the color accurately. That said, the color my eye sees is strongly dependent on light conditions with early light enhancing the blue.

Lori,

Thank you for the

Charley

Agreed - light, temperature, and the camera are the biggest variables.

Subtle difference with the same flower on this seedling, different lighting. Taken with my iPhone. It also did not look as nice when we had a week of high temps around 100.

The difference lighting makes is so striking! Setting aside the difference between "golden hour" sun vs midday, direct sunlight shows sheen and diamond-dusting, but really washes out darker colors and makes nice dark purples look merlot.

Possession of Obsession with sun vs shade:



and Sweet Little Bit, same bloom with sun vs shade



I think the "truth" (if there is such a thing) lies somewhere between the two. Most sellers will choose pictures from overcast days and that seems to work well. I love it when they offer multiple pictures. I don't love it when all the pictures are in sunlight. It doesn't feel like an accurate reflection of color.

And phone cameras sure do change the saturation, depending on how one approaches the scene in terms of lighting. It's especially apparent with greens, oranges and blues. The top one was more accurate.

I found that my phone photos did not necessarily match the real bloom so I started using photo editor to adjust the photo until side by side they match as perfectly as possible. But it has made me ponder how one person's eyes see color compared to another person's perception.

Probably sacrilege, but if I might make a comment about a rose in the same vein. I grew Griffith Buck's Distant Drums rose in Los Angeles. Beautiful! Soft shadings that pleased me every time I saw it. Lost it years ago. Moved to Oregon, colder zone, higher elevation, got it again. It was so ugly I cried. Something about the cold, elevation, whatever, made the colors sharp and jarring rather than subtle. Now it could have been messed up in the breeding somewhere along the line, as it was not the exact same plant, but I'm thinking temperature, altitude, soil, all messed up my 'perfect' rose.
Just to mention other factors than cameras, etc.

Same flower (sorry not a daylily) taken one minute apart with two different devices.