As far as accuracy of swatches..... The thumbnail swatches are done on white paper (granted, it is a thick layer). There will be quite a bit of variation to how they look on real lips since most of the lippies are somewhat sheer. If it is a thin layer, the white background tends to intensify the colors, especially of the sheerer shades, so I think we have recently gone to a thicker layer for photographing. The arm swatches are just to show how colors differ from one another since my skintone is not anywhere near a natural lip shade. Lip swatches are not very helpful, either, as there are more colors of lips than skintones. We would need an army of lip models. We do the best we can with what we have. Hopefully, knowing how we do them will help you in judging how the color might look on you.
Just for the record, on my lips Atomic looks like a cool, sheer red. (it is rated with an opacity of 0...very sheer....which means your natural lip color will show through very well, as will my arm.) It does look like a fuchsia on my arm because fair white skin plus red is pinkish. In this case, it is a bluish pink. It could also be orangeish pink if warmer hues were used to make up the red. What information this tells you, if you have issues with colors pulling pink on you, you probably want to skip Atomic and try for one that is a little warmer like Bitten or even Nectar. My arm will never give you an accurate swatch, but it does give you quite a bit of information about what is in the color. I use daylight lamps and the other shades to adjust. If I adjust this picture so that Atomic is more red, Bloom is brown and we all know it is not.
