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Does anyone know of a good book to understand colour theory/colour spaces/etc.?

by Karsteski on 5/7/24, 6:18 PM with 4 comments

I've been learning more and more about colour at both my job and just in my free time, but I don't really have a good grasp on all of these concepts. Does anyone have a good comprehensive book that covers all these topics? I don't necessarily need all the math behind things like gamma conversion, although perhaps that'd be beneficial as well.

Any input welcome, thanks in advance :)

  • by PaulHoule on 5/7/24, 6:38 PM

    I studied the subject because I was interested in making red-cyan anaglyph stereograms

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaglyph_3D

    and found out that if you have a high color gamut monitor and ask for (r,g,b)=(0,255,0) in sRGB you really get something like (15,238,15) and that little bit of red goes through the lens on the wrong eye and causes crosstalk. This can be solved by outputting (0,255,0) in the color space of the monitor or barring that (say you are displaying on the web) in some color space like Adobe RGB, Display P3 or Rec 2020 which has primaries closer to what your monitor has.

    I found thoroughly understanding this spec was helpful

    https://www.color.org/specification/ICC.1-2022-05.pdf

    and helped me get in control of colors. Of course there is a lot more to it in terms of understanding perceptual aspects of color spaces, how to systematically pick colors that work well together, etc.

  • by Khelavaster on 5/7/24, 8:38 PM

    Check out A Foreshadowing of 20st Century Art: The Color and Geometry of Early 13th Century Turkish Carpets. Move forward to On the Nature of Order.