Digital Media Dr. Jim Rowan ITEC 2110 Color

COLOR Is a mess It’s a subjective sensation PRODUCED in the brain Color differs for light and paint/ink Printing is different than viewing a monitor –a monitor EMITS light of a specific wavelength (or a combination of them) –print is like paint... it absorbs all the colors EXCEPT the color that you see which is reflected by the paint –a ball that is painted yellow and is viewed in a room that is lit by a light that is completely blue will look black... Why?

Light Is electromagnetic radiation (just like microwaves and radio signals... just different wavelengths) Visible light has a wavelength that is between 400 and 700 nanoMeters A nanoMeter is 1 billionth of a meter... –HINT: It’s a very short wave

/wiki/Electromagnetic_ spectrum

Light Visible light is a mix of different wavelengths of light at different intensities Light is composed of different intensities of different frequencies –Spectral Power Distribution

Color We need to reproduce it electronically and manipulate it digitally So… we need a way to model color. i.e. we need a way to convert a subjective sensation to a reproducible physical phenomenon

But first… Bird eye trivia Eagles have 600,000 cones per square mm of retina, humans have 150,000 The chestral (a bird) has cones that can see UV light (we don’t) Owls “see” with their ears –they have flaps that are offset in front of the ear openings to detect vertical positioning

One model of color: roughly based on the eye Rods(night vision, B&W) Cones (3 kinds, one for red, one for blue and one for green) ==> RGB tri-stimulus theory: the theory that states any color can be completely specified with just 3 values

RGB Color is captured as 3 numbers –one for red –one for green –one for blue Color is displayed on a monitor by generating 3 different colors –one for red –one for green –one for blue

The 3 colored things Phosphor for a CRT and some Flat panel displays Pockets of fluorescent gas for Plasma panel …plus a bunch of other varieties... All of them have the ability to adjust the intensity of each of the three colored things resulting in the display of most (Not All!) of the visible colors Why not all colors ==>

RGB... Good but not all visible colors In truth, the 3 different cones in the eye are cross connected in very complex ways –The firing of one receptor can inhibit or accentuate the firing of another The model we use assumes (wrongly) that each receptor is strictly sensing R or G or B ==> RGB cannot completely reproduce the visual stimulus

Gamut: The complete range or scope of something

RGB Pure red –(100%, 0%, 0%) –(255,0,0) Pure green –(0%, 100%,,0%) –(0,255,0) Pure blue –(0%, 0%, 100%) –(0,0,255) Gray? R = G = B –(25,25,25) –(150,150,150)

Mixing the Color of Light …is an additive process –monitors emit light …is not like mixing paint –mixing paint is a subtractive process –paint absorbs light

How many colors? Different cultures have different ideas about when 2 colors differ People individually differ in their ability to distinguish between two colors With the range of –which can be encoded in 1 byte (8 bits) The combinations of Red, Green and Blue results in 16.8 million possibilities 16**24 = 16,777,216

Color Depth Usually expressed in bits One byte for each of the RGB => 24 bits Back to binary... –1 bit => 2 1 => 2 choices –2 bits => 2 2 => 4 choices –4 bits => 2 4 => 16 choices –8 bits => 2 8 => 256 choices

Black, White and Grey RGB (0, 0, 0) is black –Macs and PCs are opposite… go figure! RGB (255, 255, 255) is white When R = G = B you get grey –RGB (25, 25, 25) is dark grey –RGB (200, 200, 200) is light grey

Color at 16 bit Color Depth 16 bits total to represent a color RGB with 24 bit color depth –24 bits => 3 bytes –3 bytes, 3 colors => one byte per color RGB with 16 bit color depth –16 bits => 2 bytes –2 bytes, 3 colors... –16/3 = 5 bits with one left over... –HMMMmmmm... –What to do?

…16 bit color depth 16/3 = 5 bits with one bit left over... What to do with the extra bit? Go back to human perception –Humans do not discriminate Blue as well as they do Green –Evolutionary roots? Our environment is green Lots of green to discriminate Assign 5 bits to R & B, and 6 bits to G –allows twice (how?) as many greens as blues

Why would you want more than 16.8 million? 24 bits color depth is plenty for human vision and 48 bit color are WAY more than needed for human vision... If you scan at 48 bit color there is a lot of information buried in the image than we can see BUT... This information can be used by the program to make extremely fine distinctions during image manipulation (edge finding for example) –(Failed rocket engine example)

Why worry about color depth? One reason: file size A 100X100 RGB image –at 24 bit color => 30,000 bytes uncompressed –at 16 bit color => 20,000 bytes uncompressed –1 byte => 1/3 reduction of size

Why is big bad? All that data needs to be shuttled around It wastes valuable computer resources –hard drive disk space –vram space –data transit time VRAM internet monitor main memory hard drive

FYI Indexed color… –Same as a color table representation –Same as a dictionary table representation The color table is aka the color palate

Indexed (indirect) color vs. 8 bit (direct) color 8 bit (direct) color defines only 256 colors –red through blue –256 choices, whether they are used or not Indexed color allows 256 different colors –colors that actually exist in the image

Indexed color vs. 8 bit direct color But images in nature have a narrower range of colors... a palate –8 bit direct color only allows 256 choices With indirect color you can store 256 different colors that are actually found in the image –results in an image that more closely mimics the image

Indexed (indirect) color with 256 colors in palate Even though it allows for a closer-to- real-life image natural images will have more than 256 different colors… What to do about this? –use the nearest color –optical mixing... dithering

Nearest color Loss of some detail Distorted color Generates artifacts –Banding or posterization –Example ===>

Optical mixing: Dithering Dithering uses a group of colors to approximate the desired color Works well for high resolution images –(why?) Works poorly for low resolution images –(why?)

Questions?