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Color

This lecture covers the science of color, including the spectrum, measurement, and color spaces such as CIE XYZ. It discusses how color is perceived through the eye and brain, the concept of color matching, and the historical experiments by Newton. Additionally, it outlines various color spaces used in computer graphics, including RGB, CMY, and HSV, and highlights the importance of understanding color perception and representation.

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aishadaike
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24 views33 pages

Color

This lecture covers the science of color, including the spectrum, measurement, and color spaces such as CIE XYZ. It discusses how color is perceived through the eye and brain, the concept of color matching, and the historical experiments by Newton. Additionally, it outlines various color spaces used in computer graphics, including RGB, CMY, and HSV, and highlights the importance of understanding color perception and representation.

Uploaded by

aishadaike
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lecture 2:

Color
Reading
w Hearn & Baker, Chapter 15.

Further reading:
w Brian Wandell. Foundations of Vision. Chapter 4.
Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA, 1995.
w Gerald S. Wasserman. Color Vision: An Historical
Introduction. John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1978
Outline

•Spectrum and color

•Measuring color

•The CIE XYZ color space

•Color spaces for computer graphics


What is Color?
The eyes and brain turn an incoming emission spectrum into a
discrete set of values.

The signal sent to our brain is somehow interpreted as color.

Color science asks some basic questions:


w When are two colors alike?
w How many pigments or primaries does it take to match
another color?

One more question: why should we care?


Light as Waves

Maxwell described the electromagnetic spectrum


and showed that visible light was just part of the
spectrum.
102

100 Radio waves


10,2 700 nm
Red
10,4 Orange
Infrared
10,6 Yellow
Visible Green
10,8 Ultraviolet Blue
10,10 Indigo
X-rays
10,12
Violet
400 nm

Wavelength (meters)
Light as Particles

At any given moment, a light source emits some relative


amount of photons at each frequency.

We can plot the emission spectrum of a light source as power


vs. wavelength.
Cones

w Cones come in three varieties: S, M, and L.


Transmitting color

Color information is transmitted to the brain in three


nerve bundles or channels:
w Achromatic channel A = M + L
w Red-green chromatic channel R/G = M - L
w Blue-yellow chromatic channel B/Y = S - A

Saturation is perceived as the ratio of chromatic to


achromatic response.
Newton’s Experiments
Newton was the first to perform a scientific experiment on
color in 1666.

Newton’s experimental setup (Wandell 4.1)

He built a simple colorimeter:


w Hole in a shutter
w Prism to disperse white light into a spectrum
w Comb-shaped aperture to manipulate the spectrum
w Converging lens to recombine the spectrum
Newton’s Experiments, cont’d
Newton defined two types of light:
w Simple: Light that cannot be furthered dispersed by a prism (now
called monochromatic)
w Compound: Light that can be dispersed.

He called the colors of simple lights primaries.

[This term means many things today.]


Color Matching

Conjecture: every color can be uniquely expressed as a mixing


of a small number of primaries. (Why is this plausible?)
If true, this gives us a meaningful definition of color as a set of
primaries and the range of possible combinations between
them.
Given a choice of primaries, how can we verify the conjecture?
The Color Matching Experiment
Example: Wright’s experiments
In the late 20’s, Wright found that the colors of all wavelengths could be
reproduced with combinations of 3 primaries at 460, 530, and 650nm:

These functions are color-matching functions for the given primaries.


Color matching, cont’d
Key observations:
1. Three primaries are “sufficient” for color matching.
2. We can compute the knob settings using three functions. These are
called the color matching functions.
3. Color matching functions are linear transforms of the cone responses.
4. All sets of color matching functions are linear transforms of each
other.
5. The resulting knob settings can take on negative values.
Choosing Primaries

Emission spectra for RGB monitor phosphors (Wandell B.3)

Primaries don’t have to be monochromatic. You can still derive color


matching functions.
Emission Spectrum is not Color
Recall how much averaging the eye does. Light is infinite
dimensional!

Different light sources can evoke exactly the same colors.


Such lights are called metamers.

A dim tungsten bulb and an RGB monitor set up to emit a metameric spectrum
(Wandell 4.11)
Colored Surfaces

So far, we’ve discussed the colors of lights. How do surfaces acquire color?

A surface’s reflectance is its tendency to reflect incoming light across the


spectrum.

Reflectance is combined subtractively with incoming light. (Actually, the


process is multiplicative.)
Subtractive Metamers

Reflectance adds a whole new dimension of complexity to color


perception.

The solid curve appears green indoors and out. The dashed curve looks
green outdoors, but brown under incandescent light.
Illustration of Color Appearance
The CIE XYZ System
A standard created in 1931 by CIE, defined in terms of three color matching
functions.
CIE Coordinates
Given an emission spectrum, we can use the CIE matching functions to
obtain the X, Y and Z coordinates.
X = ∫ x (λ )t (λ )d λ

Y = ∫ y ( λ )t (λ ) d λ

Z = ∫ z (λ )t (λ ) d λ

Then we can compute chromaticity coordinates. This gives a brightness


independent notion of color.

X
x=
X +Y + Z
Y
y=
X +Y + Z
Z
z=
X +Y + Z
The CIE Color Blob
The CIE Chromaticity Diagram

A projection of the plane X+Y+Z=1.

Each point is a chromaticity value, which depends on


dominant wavelength, or hue, and excitation purity, or
saturation.
More About Chromaticity

Dominant wavelengths go around the perimeter of


the chromaticity blob.
w A color’s dominant wavelength is where a line from
white through that color intersects the perimeter.
w Some colors, called nonspectral color’s, don’t have a
dominant wavelength.

Excitation purity is measured in terms of a color’s


position on the line to its dominant wavelength.

Complementary colors lie on opposite sides of white,


and can be mixed to get white.
Gamuts
Not every output device can reproduce every color. A device’s range of
reproducible colors is called its gamut.

Gamuts of a few common output devices in CIE space (Foley, II.2)


Perceptual (Non-)uniformity

The XYZ color space is not perceptually uniform!

Some modified spaces attempt to fix this:


•L*u*v*
•L*a*b*
Color Spaces for Computer Graphics

In practice, there’s a set of more commonly-used color spaces in computer


graphics:
• RGB for display
• CMY (or CMYK) for hardcopy
• HSV for user selection
• YIQ for television broadcast
RGB

Perhaps the most familiar color space, and the most convenient for display on
a CRT.

What does the RGB color space look like?


HSV

More natural for user interaction, corresponds to the artistic concepts of tint,
shade and tone.

The HSV space looks like a cone:


CMY

A subtractive color space used for printing.

Involves three subtractive primaries:


• Cyan - subtracts red
• Magenta - subtracts green
• Yellow - subtracts blue
Mixing two pigments subtracts their opposites from white.

CMYK adds blacK ink rather than using equal amounts of all three.
RGB vs. CMY
YIQ

Used in TV broadcasting, YIQ exploits useful properties of the visual system.

• Y - luminance (taken from CIE)


• I - major axis of remaining color space
• Q - remaining axis
YIQ is broadcast with relative bandwidth ratios 8:3:1

• We’re best as distinguishing changes in


luminance.
• Small objects can be compressed into a
single color dimension.
Why do we devote a channel to luminance?
Summary
Here’s what you should take home from this lecture:

w All the boldfaced terms.


w How the color matching experiment works
w The relationship between color matching and functions cone
responses
w The difference between emissive and reflective color
w The CIE XYZ color standard and how to interpret the chromaticity
diagram
w The color spaces used in computer graphics

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