Color Appearance Models

What Hacker News says

1. SideQuarkJun 2026
   It is 3 dimensional. That commonly repeated CIE diagram is a 2d slice of the color volume. Since 1931 that diagram is obsolete, misleading, and fails at a lot of modern color science, and has been replaced many times, but is what many people go to. The most recent replacement (well, by CIE), is CIE 2015. Comment on it [1]

   Modern color modeling is much richer then 3 parameters, because human vision is much more complex than simply color frequencies. CIE 1931 was low brightness, 2 degree field of vision, center of vision derived. As brightness increases, color perception shifts. Colors are NOT linear; sRGB and CIE 1931 chose such a small section of human vision that they approximate that section with a linear assumption. Modern CIECAM models are not linear, are not 3 parameter, because color is not linear (CIECAM02 is 6 parameter [2], there are several after that one). A century of experiments, wide color gamuts, HDR, have thrown out CIE 1931 as a good model. It’s only momentum now, and slowly higher end things are replacing it.

   A good introduction is Color Appearance Models, by Mark Fairchild, also any of his technical papers give a starting point into the science.

   [1] https://community.acescentral.com/t/cie-2015-cmfs-what-would...

   [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIECAM02

   Show morethread
2. suzumerSep 2024
   Mark Fairchild, one of the authors of CIECAM02, recently published a paper that heavily simplified that equation: https://markfairchild.org/PDFs/PAP45.pdf

   If the link doesn't work, the paper is called: Brightness, lightness, colorfulness, and chroma in CIECAM02 and CAM16.

   Also, if you want a readable introduction to color science, you can check out his book Color Appearance Models.

   thread
3. refulgentisJan 2021
   Read Color Appearance Models 3rd Edition by Fairchild, it covers __everything__.

   I think someday soon I'll be communicating about this more widely, we'll see though

   thread
4. jacobolusDec 2020
   The best online resource is https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/wcolor.html

   Or you can buy an introductory color science book or two. Let me recommend Mark Fairchild's Color Appearance Models, https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119967031/ but here are a few others https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119367220 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470024259 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118173848/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470049049

   thread
5. jacobolusFeb 2019
   Like many resources about color, this one has an output-medium-centric followed by early-20th-century-experiment-design-centric viewpoint, presumably because that was where the author started and what he read about. But however perfect the exposition might otherwise be, that is the wrong way to start a general discussion of the subject, and the result is inevitably misleading and confusing for non-experts.

   > it is a pragmatic approach

   Having tried to talk face-to-face to many people from different backgrounds about color, in practice this doesn’t work. People are starting with too many misconceptions and gaps in foundational knowledge.

   If you want to understand color you have to start with at least the basics about the physiology of human vision, along with some basic optics. It is all but impossible to properly understand what is going on with RGB displays, understand what “white point” means, etc. without that background.

   One of the resource recommended at the end, Bruce MacEvoy’s site http://handprint.com/LS/CVS/color.html is a much better starting place, albeit pretty long for someone just interested in the basics.

   Or there are many books about human color vision and color reproduction, some friendlier for laypeople and others highly detailed and technical. To understand recent color models Mark Fairchild’s book Color Appearance Models is pretty good, and the first half is a pretty accessible general overview. Or for more about color reproduction try Billmeyer and Saltzman’s Principles of Color Technology (recent editions rewritten by Roy Berns). For more about colorimetry try Hunt & Pointer’s book Measuring Color. Or for something historical, try Kuehni’s Color Space and Its Divisions.

   Show morethread
6. foolrushFeb 2018
   The reading for most of this stuff is ridiculously dense, as well as being more reference.

   You sound like a perfect candidate to dig into Colour. There are a great many extremely knowledgeable people around that project that can help.

   Mark Fairchild's Color Appearance Models is probably about the most canonical tome one can recommend, with the caveat above.

   To do what you are seeking, you would need an accurate profile of your camera in question, as well as likely a spectrophotometer for the objects in question. It is a pretty tricky field.

   I would encourage you to contact the Colour Science Twitter feed to get in on the Slack channel for help and guidance.

   See you there!

   Show morethread