Re: Of colorful scepticism
Re: Of colorful scepticism
- Subject: Re: Of colorful scepticism
- From: Igor Asselbergs <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2001 09:38:23 +0200
Henrik Holmegaard wrote:
>
Relax, there is nothing extraordinary you are compelled to find out
>
before you can REALLY take part in ordinary human discourse, whether
>
of color or music or ... -:). Or in other words you don't need to put
>
human understanding on a scientific footing before human
>
understanding is possible. We all manage quite well every day of the
>
week -:).
Not to put everything on a scientific footing, but simply to gain some
knowledge on the subject, try this:
Helmholtz: 'Helmholz's treatise on physiological optics'
Land: anything, but you might start with 'Color vision and the natural
image'
Hering: 'Outlines of a theory of of the light sense'
That should keep you busy for a while. :-)
Earlier I was pointed towards Poyntons pages. I know his pages, and they're
pretty good when it comes to technical stuff. But I scanned the pages for
info about colour constancy and hardly anything came up. I did that because
colour constancy was at the core of my argument.
Even Poyntons colour faq doesn't mention anything. Wich is pretty amazing,
considering a number of researchers stated that it is the most crucial
phenomenon in colour perception.
The only thing I came up with in Poyntons links was, frankly, some ignorant
crap. (not by Poynton, mind you, but he did link to it)
If this is the level of knowledge I'm dealing with, no wonder I keep
repeating myself.
Let me conclude with some words of the distiguished E. Hering, that will
maybe shed some light on the subject:
"....if I stand with my back to a window, hold a piece of smooth, dark-gray
paper in front of me, and look with two eyes alternetaly at the paper and at
the white painted wall of the room behind it, then the latter appears white
and the former dark gray, although the paper because of its much stronger
illumination is of much stronger light intensity than the wall. Now without
changing the position of the paper or of my head in any way, let me fixate
the upper edge of the paper with only one eye and try to see the colors of
the paper and the wall in one plane: now indeed the wall appears darker than
the paper."
Igor Asselbergs