3 ms·
The obvious follow-up questions: Is magenta a color, despite requiring two wavelengths? Is brown a color despite being just dark orange? Is metallic gray differ
by wongarsu 2y ago
The obvious follow-up questions: Is magenta a color, despite requiring two wavelengths? Is brown a color despite being just dark orange? Is metallic gray different from gray (i.e. does light scattering matter)? What about subsurface light scattering, like in skin or translucent plastic?
Color is a bit like our classification of continents: it's useful, but only makes sense if you don't look too hard. And maybe it's fine if webdesign and miniature painting have different opinions on what makes a color a color.
- nzach 2y agoFor context, Technology Connections did an entire video on the brown color: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU
- beardyw 2y agoAll colours (pretty much) are a wide spectrum with varying amounts of every wavelength. Our eyes do a pretty poor job, compared to sound to our ears, of separating out the wavelengths, just boiling them down to a single hue. The folks examining fine art do a full spectral analysis of paint to verify it's authenticity. Something the human eye can't do.
- wongarsu 2y agoYeah, that's another giant can of worms. Light with a wavelength of 600nm is orange, but there is a combination of red and yellow light that is indistinguishable from 600nm light to us. Worse, there is an infinite number of combinations of two or more different wavelengths that look indistinguishable from 600nm light to us. Yet any other species would disagree that they look the same. Or a human with slightly shifted sensitivity spectrums of their rods or cones. One the one hand it's great because it makes full-color print and screens so easy. On the other hand there is so much information in light that is simplified away by our eyes