The colors seems to be binary, only 0 or 255 are accepted. All intermediates values are discarded.
Here is a example code to reproduce the issue:
require 'image'
l = image.lena()
l = image.drawText(l, 'test',10,10, {color={0,255,0}}) -- Works (green)
image.display(l)
f = image.lena()
f = image.drawText(f, 'test',10,10, {color={0,0,255}}) -- Works (blue)
image.display(f)
g = image.lena()
g = image.drawText(g, 'test',10,10, {color={254,0,0}}) -- Won't works (black)
image.display(g)
The colors seems to be binary, only 0 or 255 are accepted. All intermediates values are discarded. Here is a example code to reproduce the issue: