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No, this is not true. There are: 1) technical limitations - even high end color printers today, have problems with reproducing various shades of brown, which

No, this is not true. There are: 1) technical limitations - even high end color printers today, have problems with reproducing various shades of brown, which is what almost all Black people in the USA at least, are (there are a few people with very dark skin which is more truly black). If you want a torture test for a color printer, take a photo of a brown/beige wall with a medium brown sofa in front of it, lit by a single light source from one side. The range of brown colors will be very tough to produce properly. 2) tuning limitations, often of the photographer - you can look at black and white photos from even the 1940s for instance of musicians and the black musicians are exposed and developed properly. See for instance the first photo here: https://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Harvey/harvey.html https://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Harvey/harvey.html or an image search for "1940s jazz musicians" The school photographer that the person mentioned in the article just didn't know how to adjust the exposure properly; they likely set up a distance from the camera, with a set amount of flash, set the same exposure for that school like they did for the 20 others they were going to, and popped off all the photos at the exact same settings. Whenever you see an article about someone complaining about "privileged photographic chemical processes" -- check to see if the author of the article ever talked to an actual color scientist. Note: there are some changes in the chemistry to allow for tinting - but that is a bias that can be overcome quite easily if photographing people who are of a different ethnicity.

eropple 3y ago
> 1) technical limitations - even high end color printers today, have problems with reproducing various shades of brown, which is what almost all Black people in the USA at least, are (there are a few people with very dark skin which is more truly black). I am not a color scientist, but I am a photo- and videographer and have done print design and I've had reason to stare into video codecs in the past, so while I'm not an expert and would not claim to be one, I have some familiarity with digital and paper color reproduction. You are, to be 100% clear, correct about this in the current state of the world. But it's also quite easy for this to be a just-so story: printers are bad at this, sure, but I'm aware of no reason that they have to be. Analogies are always suspect, but consider: 15-bit RGB color is noticeably less able to articulate perceptual green gradients, which is why a common color format is thus 565--that's optimizing for human biology. We sell monitors to humans, not to dogs. Now, take it back to film and to paper: is a roll of film or a printer dealing with hard limits of physics or biology, or just optimizing for the assumption that the people guiding the research, specifying product output, and (for a long time) buying that output...had lighter skin? It doesn't have to be a conspiracy. It can just be the local maximum of capitalism.txt leading to worse global outcomes.
- shrubble 3y ago
  I think it is that on monitors we use RGB and on paper, if printing, we use CMYK colors; so there is a problem just going from on-screen to print in some cases. And brown is a tertiary color: From https://www.canva.com/colors/color-meanings/brown/ https://www.canva.com/colors/color-meanings/brown/ : "In a RGB color space (made from three colored lights for red, green, and blue), hex #964B00 is made of 58.8% red, 29.4% green and 0% blue. In a CMYK color space (also known as process color, or four color, and used in color printing), hex #964B00 is made of 0% cyan, 50% magenta, 100% yellow and 41% black. Brown has a hue angle of 30 degrees, a saturation of 100% and a lightness of 29.4%." (of course different browns will vary) Since the mixing requires magenta, yellow and black, it is just that much more difficult to get it exactly correct. If the world had used something other than CMYK, perhaps it would be easier - but it would likely still be a tertiary color which requires very careful quality control; and as you no doubt remember, early color printers suffered from "metamerism" where the perceived color/intensity would vary depending on the angle of the light hitting the ink on the paper, or the angle at which the paper was viewed.
  - LocalH 3y ago
    Brown is a "fake" color, in both additive and subtractive realms, indistinguishable from dark orange without contextual clues. Or one could be funny and say that orange is really "bright brown", either way.

eropple 3y ago

> 1) technical limitations - even high end color printers today, have problems with reproducing various shades of brown, which is what almost all Black people in the USA at least, are (there are a few people with very dark skin which is more truly black). I am not a color scientist, but I am a photo- and videographer and have done print design and I've had reason to stare into video codecs in the past, so while I'm not an expert and would not claim to be one, I have some familiarity with digital and paper color reproduction. You are, to be 100% clear, correct about this in the current state of the world. But it's also quite easy for this to be a just-so story: printers are bad at this, sure, but I'm aware of no reason that they have to be. Analogies are always suspect, but consider: 15-bit RGB color is noticeably less able to articulate perceptual green gradients, which is why a common color format is thus 565--that's optimizing for human biology. We sell monitors to humans, not to dogs. Now, take it back to film and to paper: is a roll of film or a printer dealing with hard limits of physics or biology, or just optimizing for the assumption that the people guiding the research, specifying product output, and (for a long time) buying that output...had lighter skin? It doesn't have to be a conspiracy. It can just be the local maximum of capitalism.txt leading to worse global outcomes.

shrubble 3y ago
I think it is that on monitors we use RGB and on paper, if printing, we use CMYK colors; so there is a problem just going from on-screen to print in some cases. And brown is a tertiary color: From https://www.canva.com/colors/color-meanings/brown/ https://www.canva.com/colors/color-meanings/brown/ : "In a RGB color space (made from three colored lights for red, green, and blue), hex #964B00 is made of 58.8% red, 29.4% green and 0% blue. In a CMYK color space (also known as process color, or four color, and used in color printing), hex #964B00 is made of 0% cyan, 50% magenta, 100% yellow and 41% black. Brown has a hue angle of 30 degrees, a saturation of 100% and a lightness of 29.4%." (of course different browns will vary) Since the mixing requires magenta, yellow and black, it is just that much more difficult to get it exactly correct. If the world had used something other than CMYK, perhaps it would be easier - but it would likely still be a tertiary color which requires very careful quality control; and as you no doubt remember, early color printers suffered from "metamerism" where the perceived color/intensity would vary depending on the angle of the light hitting the ink on the paper, or the angle at which the paper was viewed.
- LocalH 3y ago
  Brown is a "fake" color, in both additive and subtractive realms, indistinguishable from dark orange without contextual clues. Or one could be funny and say that orange is really "bright brown", either way.