I sort of wonder is there a "true" way to represent color? Would a intensity over frequency curve do it?
I probably lack the terminology to express myself properly, but color ends up being a very human thing, with a huge focus on primary colors(the colors that match the frequency response of the human eye) This is fine, we are human after all, but then I always feel color theory dives off the deep end, with color wheels and complimentary colors and triplets, etc. why? there is nothing physically cyclic going on. It never makes any sense to me that patterns based on it being cyclic would be any better than just picking colors. Any way, silly rant aside, if we wanted to define an objective physical color format, how would it be done?
> I sort of wonder is there a "true" way to represent color? Would an intensity over frequency curve do it?
There’s no single “true” way because color isn’t a fixed property of light itself, it’s the result of how a visual system interprets wavelengths.
Having said that, if you’re looking for an objective way that doesn’t depend on observer, you could use spectral power distribution.
That would be the mix of wavelengths present, plotted as intensity vs. wavelength.
That’s because a single wavelength (say 580nm) produces one specific color sensation, but many different combinations of wavelengths can produce that identical sensation (called metamers), so representing color by wavelength alone isn’t even uniquely “true” perceptually.
You could go a long way by specifying the reflectiveness over the visible light spectrum and then do the same for light sources. That way, you could do GDR style truly monochrome sodium vapor lamps, which makes telling colors apart impossible.
To do neon colors, you would need some sort of frequency redirect in your texture data as in "this pixel absorbs 80% infrared, but reemits it as visible red". Then you could have black light light sources and cool poster textures as well.
I think doing textures in this format would take too much space, but doing a 256 color palette that way might be fine.
“I’ve thought about this for five minutes, and it seems so simple. It must be the tens of thousands of vision scientists and psychophysicists who have worked on this for the last century who have all missed how simple it is.”
There are no objective "basic colors". What "white" means is "excites our different types of photoreceptors roughly equally". And the photoreceptors have the sensitivity curves that they do because of our sun’s surface temperature and a convenient "window" in the opacity of our atmosphere. Organisms evolved under a different star, within a different atmosphere would have a different idea of what a "neutral" color is.
CRI of lights is definitely a large factor in my purchasing these days. The muting, compressive response of some lights almost pains me at this point.
As this post's author noted white LEDs can be pretty solid. Bulbs that have a mix of white LEDs at various temperatures to be "bi-color" tend to be pretty solid as well. Its once you go towards RGB light bulbs that you tend to get a fairly iffy CRI.
I sort of wonder is there a "true" way to represent color? Would a intensity over frequency curve do it?
I probably lack the terminology to express myself properly, but color ends up being a very human thing, with a huge focus on primary colors(the colors that match the frequency response of the human eye) This is fine, we are human after all, but then I always feel color theory dives off the deep end, with color wheels and complimentary colors and triplets, etc. why? there is nothing physically cyclic going on. It never makes any sense to me that patterns based on it being cyclic would be any better than just picking colors. Any way, silly rant aside, if we wanted to define an objective physical color format, how would it be done?
> I sort of wonder is there a "true" way to represent color? Would an intensity over frequency curve do it?
There’s no single “true” way because color isn’t a fixed property of light itself, it’s the result of how a visual system interprets wavelengths.
Having said that, if you’re looking for an objective way that doesn’t depend on observer, you could use spectral power distribution.
That would be the mix of wavelengths present, plotted as intensity vs. wavelength.
That’s because a single wavelength (say 580nm) produces one specific color sensation, but many different combinations of wavelengths can produce that identical sensation (called metamers), so representing color by wavelength alone isn’t even uniquely “true” perceptually.
You could go a long way by specifying the reflectiveness over the visible light spectrum and then do the same for light sources. That way, you could do GDR style truly monochrome sodium vapor lamps, which makes telling colors apart impossible.
To do neon colors, you would need some sort of frequency redirect in your texture data as in "this pixel absorbs 80% infrared, but reemits it as visible red". Then you could have black light light sources and cool poster textures as well.
I think doing textures in this format would take too much space, but doing a 256 color palette that way might be fine.
Colors only exist in the human brain, they're qualia, interpreted from the mixture of wavelengths our eyes detect.
“I’ve thought about this for five minutes, and it seems so simple. It must be the tens of thousands of vision scientists and psychophysicists who have worked on this for the last century who have all missed how simple it is.”
Sun is white light. Wonder what that means. Brightest object in out awareness is modeled as clean white. Or is this the actual basic color.
There are no objective "basic colors". What "white" means is "excites our different types of photoreceptors roughly equally". And the photoreceptors have the sensitivity curves that they do because of our sun’s surface temperature and a convenient "window" in the opacity of our atmosphere. Organisms evolved under a different star, within a different atmosphere would have a different idea of what a "neutral" color is.
CRI of lights is definitely a large factor in my purchasing these days. The muting, compressive response of some lights almost pains me at this point.
As this post's author noted white LEDs can be pretty solid. Bulbs that have a mix of white LEDs at various temperatures to be "bi-color" tend to be pretty solid as well. Its once you go towards RGB light bulbs that you tend to get a fairly iffy CRI.
I've referenced https://optimizeyourbiology.com/light-bulb-database and https://optimizeyourbiology.com/smart-light-database before when looking at bulbs but if anyone has a better resource, absolutely please drop a reply.
I'd be curious to understand exactly how CRI equates to the charts in this post!