Pirate vs. Pirate

Sometimes, even when you use the same color dye it comes out differently. Both of these pirate shirts were dyed with black dye and were in one photo, I didn't modify the colors at all.

The one on the right has more of a purple cast to it. Black dye isn’t normally a ‘pure’ dye. It is made up of different colors of dye powder. So a weaker solution, or around the edges when tie-dyeing, won’t necessarily be gray. It might have a different color cast. Dharma describes the color cast each of their 4 black fiber reactive dyes has on the Description tab.

What can also happen is the color won’t be the same if the water used to dissolve the dye wasn’t warm enough. Some of the colors need hotter water to dissolve well. Fuchsia and turquoise both seem to dissolve better in warmer water. So some of one color’s particles might dissolve better than another color’s giving you something different than what you expected. That may not be a problem, it depends on what you want.