How do humans perceive color? Is it just the way we see it or is color actually there?
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TLDR: Color is a perception. Change the color of light you are observing something under and its color appears to change in shade/hue/saturation etc etc. When you see an object under some sort of light, all the other colors of the rainbow are absorbed by the object, and the color you see is something that wasnt absorbed by the object(reflected back to you)…dont believe me? See my explanation below.
Apologies, this got big fast.
The ELI5 version below
I will give you a brief 101 on Color Theory. There are 2 types of color…Additive color and subtractive color. Want to know how to tell which is which? Go into a dark room with no light then look at what ever object you had. If you cant see the color, thats called subtractive color. Additive color is made with colored light…
Ok so what color is sunlight? Get a prism or a crystal of some sort and look at the light coming through it. That proves the sunlight is all the colors. When you look at an item, the color you are seeing is the color being reflected to your eyes. Subtractive, because all of the colors of the rainbow (sunlight) are absorbed except the color you perceive the object to be.
Now, remember its perception of color. Which is important because depending on the source/type of light affects how the human eye perceives the color. Photographers totally know about this…The time just before/after Sunrise/sunset being the “golden hour”. The light is softer and warmer. At noon the light is a harsher white color… So grab a picture of something preferably on printer paper (nothing waxed, or too much of a sheen) and look at it under natural light. Then go to a room that the predominate source of light is a light bulb. Doesnt matter what kind of lightbulb. If you can test looking at the image under all sorts of different light and you will see the difference it makes.
Now look at something under a black light. See how different the image looks now? Then if you have one, look at it under infrared light or an infrared filter.
Interesting isnt it…Now think about this…Your boss is on another continent at head office and he tells you to paint a way Serenity Blue. You look on your computer and go pick up the paint..There is so much room for interpretation it isnt funny. You paint the wall he comes for a visit and is extremely pissed of because, thats not the company’s logo color that he wanted. You googled the color and because a monitor uses “Additive Color” to reproduce colors it isnt an exact match. (not to mention your monitor wasnt color calibrated. Thankfully there is an international organization the regulates colors. THe Pantone Color System…It breaks down the color ratios used to make a certain color…In this example he wanted you to use Pantone 15-3919 Serenity. Matching colors from one region to another would be impossible without the Pantone System. Now Pantone 15-3919 is the same color around the world. This is how they mix pain at hardware stores.
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