{Perception of Color}
Colour is such an important part of all of our lives. From navigating our daily lives to designing the world around us, it is embedded in the human experience. There is no shortage of topics on colour but I want to share with you the dimensions of colour and how they impact our senses.
Let’s start with how we perceive color
When I say the words opaque object, sounds pretty boring right? An opaque object is something that tends to be solid and not “see through” or translucent. Now when I splash color into the mix
our brain tends to light up with activity. Why? Well it actually has something to do with light itself. The light reflected from the object activates the visual process in the eyes which connects and sends information to the brain. Illuminants, or materials that emit light, have different spectral energy distributions. This means that the way light hits an object impacts the energy and wavelengths that are emitted by the object. Which in turn impacts the way our eyes and brain interpret that color. Interestingly enough human eyes and brains have the unique ability to interpret color despite how it’s illuminated. This is called color constancy. For example a yellow banana appears yellow under natural sunlight as well as fluorescent lighting.Colour constancy doesn’t apply however to subtle differences in color, which might explain why you may have a hard time distinguishing light blue from powder blue. The intensity of illumination can also affect color perception. For example at very low light levels blue and green objects tend to be brighter than red ones. This explains why your perception of a painting in a museum, with well curated lighting, may look a bit different when sitting on a wall with ordinary sunlight.
What makes our eyes process colour?
The most prominent theories of color vision is the trichromatic theory which was proposed in 1801 which postulated that there are three types of colour receptors in the eye. Without giving you a lengthy history lesson, it’s relevant to know that the actual existence of such receptor cells, known as cones, was confirmed in the early 1960s. Cones have three types of photopigments. These are molecules that undergo chemical reactions when exposed to light of different wavelengths. Each of these photopigments have maximum sensitivities in blue green and reg regions of the light spectrum. These are often designated as small medium and long wavelengths respectively. Ultimately cones require bright light but allow us to see the world around us in sharp vivid colour.
