Abstract
The chapter deals with aspects of color perception starting from the first theories based on basic technologies for the development of different color devices. The physiology of the human eye is briefly described to understand some phenomena of natural vision together with the mechanisms of image formation and its processing for the reconstruction and recognition of objects in the scene. The basic steps on the advancement of knowledge to understand color perception are presented and different models of color representation are described. In modern colorimetry the different models are described, which rigorously explain the phenomena of the appearance of colors in different environmental conditions and the established methodologies that, since 1931, have been developed for color perception and reproduction (additive and subtractive synthesis method). Such color models based on physical and mathematical foundations numerically describe color, in an objective way, when associated with the spectral radiation that generated it. The different 2D and 3D representations of color are also reported, oriented toward visual technologies (YUV, YIQ), color reproduction (sRGB, adobe RGB), printing technologies (CMY, CMYK), psychometric aspects, and all aspects of color (CIELab, CIELuv, CIECAM).
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Notes
- 1.
Unit of measurement of the international frequency system. Unit of measurement applicable to any periodic event. A Hertz equals one pulse per second and is indicated with Hz expressed in 1/s seconds or \( s ^ {- 1} \). 1 Terahertz (THz) = 10\(^{12}\).
- 2.
A metal has a very free bond of its external electrons with the atom, so a considerable number of electrons are free to move within its lattice structure. This makes the metal even an excellent conductor. When a beam of light strikes a metallic surface, the light waves have an electric and magnetic field, perpendicular to each other and to the direction of propagation. As soon as it hits a metal surface, the electric field cannot be maintained in the conductor, so it creates other light waves with the property that the magnetic field agrees with the incident light beam, and the electric field exactly cancels. This light beam then propagates out, away from the metal surface. This is a way of saying that the combination of the incident and the reflected light ray add up to satisfy the boundary conditions on the waves’ differential equation. No light energy can propagate into the metal. So if the interface was water or glass, the differential equation boundary condition would be solved by the sum of the incident, reflected, and refracted light rays; but for a metal, only the incident and reflected are necessary or physically possible.
- 3.
The photometer is an instrument suitable for measuring light intensity. Optical photometers and photoelectric ones are distinguished. In the former, evaluation is given directly by the eye, while the latter uses photoelectric cells exploiting photoemission and photoconductivity phenomena, allowing the measurement of brightness by means of an appropriately calibrated ammeter. The spectrophotometer, on the other hand, is normally used to measure the reflection and transmission properties (transmittance or reflectance) of liquid substances or solid materials depending on the wavelength. Unlike photometers, spectrophotometers measure the intensity of a light beam as a function of its spectral content (various wavelengths \( \lambda \)), for example, in the visible band (color).
- 4.
Discovered by the German Ernst Mach.
- 5.
In the literature, the greater spectral sensitivity of human photoreceptors to red, green, and blue, is also indicated with the terminology of higher sensitivity to the short wavelength (cones S), medium (cones M), and long (cones L).
- 6.
While the definition of hue and saturation are relatively uncontroversial the definition of a lightness or value dimension is less obvious and there are several possibilities depending on the purpose and goals of the representation. In the following, we will see different metrics to define the lightness in relation to the color representation model. For example, in the HSI model it is indicated with the Intensity I and defined as the arithmetic mean of the color components RGB; in the HSL model the lightness is indicated with L and defined as the average between the maximum and minimum value of the color components RGB; and in the HSV model is indicated with value V and defined as the value corresponding to the maximum value between the RGB components.
- 7.
Among the algorithms used we can mention: modification of gray levels, geometric correction, extraction of contours, etc.
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Distante, A., Distante, C. (2020). Color. In: Handbook of Image Processing and Computer Vision. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38148-6_3
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