The Nine Irrefutable Laws of Colors

[LenR]

Does anyone here know who wrote "The Nine Irrefutable Laws of Colors"?
Just curious:)

[Shutterbug2006]

Never heard of it - Google was no help.

As I understand the laws of colors;

Of all the colors in the universe, only three are pure. Red, Blue and Yellow.
They cannot be made by mixing any other colors.
Secondary colors are created by mixing two primary colors.
Tertiary colors are by mixing a primary color with a secondary color.
Tone defines the value of color as warm or cool.
Level describes the intensity of the color from dark (level 1) to light (level 10).

That's six. What are the other three?

[Jim Kasson]

As I understand the laws of colors;

Of all the colors in the universe, only three are pure. Red, Blue and Yellow.
They cannot be made by mixing any other colors.

I think those two are indeed refutable.

Primary colors are a choice, not something handed down as physical laws. Additive color systems, such as those that mix light to produce intermediate colors, need three or more primaries to provide a non-trivial gamut, but the choice of those colors is made by the system designer. When using three colors, they are usually a red, a green (not yellow) and a blue, but the exact characteristics of each of the three colors varies from system to system.

In subtractive color systems, such as those used in printing, again, three or more primaries are needed, but in this case, it's usually more. The standard set of printing primaries is cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. There are many different choices for each of these. In modern printers, these primaries are often supplemented by different colors with the objective of increasing gamut: Epson uses green and orange, for example.

Mixing pigmented paints is more complicated, and has aspects of both additive and subtractive color, with some of its own peculiarities thrown in.

In additive color systems, any non-spectral color. including one or more of the primaries, can be created by mixing two other colors chosen from the gamut of all visible colors.

Color is complicated, and is not easily boiled down to simple "laws."

[Simon Garrett]

Color is complicated, and is not easily boiled down to simple "laws."

In fact, I'd say that the only irrefutable law of colour is that there is no irrefutable law of colour.

[digitaldog]

Color, is a perceptual property. So if you can't see it it's not a color. Color is not a particular wavelength of light. It is a cognitive perception. The excitation of photoreceptors followed by retinal processing and ending in the our visual cortex, within our brains. As such, colors are defined based on perceptual experiments.

A coordinate in a "colorspace" outside the spectrum locus is not a color. We often refer to these as "imaginary colors" but this is by and large also wrong as you can't map an imaginary color from one colorspace to another as the math (and experimental data) for each colorspace breaks down outside the spectrum locus.

[Jim Kasson]

A coordinate in a "colorspace" outside the spectrum locus is not a color. We often refer to these as "imaginary colors" but this is by and large also wrong as you can't map an imaginary color from one colorspace to another as the math (and experimental data) for each colorspace breaks down outside the spectrum locus.

I agree wholeheartedly. And I guess that means that I should fess up to being tautological when I said "visible colors.'

Jim

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I agree wholeheartedly. And I guess that means that I should fess up to being tautological when I said "visible colors.'

Hi Jim,

Not really tautological. What's visible may be somewhat different between humans, and different animal species ...

Besides, out-of-gamut 'colors' can still be used for calculations or color space conversions. What's OOG in one color space, may be in gamut for another color space.

Cheers,
Bart

[LenR]

You are all very wise regarding color, however the Nine Irrefutable Laws of Colors are humorous (but irrefutable none the less) written by a color sage before the ICC was formed and before the WWW (internet).
As a digital photographer I was relatively alone in an industry controlled by printers and service bureaus.
At the time, @1990 we were all (clients and suppliers) connected thru BBS's through which files and ideas were exchanged.  
In the abscense of Color Management the way we converted our RGB files to CMYK was to contact the press and find out:
1) their "Start point for Cyan"
2) their "Max K"
3) their "Total Ink"
This was a "by the numbers" reliable method to create cmyk files tailored to specific press conditions .
We had a lot to deal with that was new and outside of the box but our clients didn't have a clue of what went in to what we did.

The Nine Irrefutable Laws of Colors are written with those clients in mind:)

[PeterAit]

Color is a subjective construct of the human perceptual system. Frequency is an objective characteristic of photons. If you ever doubt that color is subjective, you are invited to hear my wife and I have one if our "it's blue, no it's green"  discussions!

[Farmer]

Maybe she's a tetrachromat?

[Alan Klein]

How would you describe the color purple to a blind person?

[Farmer]

You would have to interpret based on their paradigm.  So you'd have to think about temperature, texture, pitch, volume and so on.  The key word in all of that is interpret, because it's all subjective.

[WombatHorror]

Never heard of it - Google was no help.

As I understand the laws of colors;

Of all the colors in the universe, only three are pure. Red, Blue and Yellow.
They cannot be made by mixing any other colors.

No since there is no logic to say one frequency of photons is more pure than another.
Color is perception and it varies by species and even within species.
For a typical human, it's more or less a tristimulus model so you can use three primaries. For additive (light sources) red, blue, green are the basic primaries. For subtractive scenarios like drawing with crayons it's different three.

Things are a bit trickier though and to avoid metamerism issues you really need to stick to using full spectral outputs and not stick to tri-stim color-management.

Everyone has things tuned a touch differently in their eyes, some radically so (some women are more like 4-color (fairly rare) and some guys are more like only 2-color (not that rare), most males and females are 3-color).

The weird thing about colors is that you can't really describe them in the end. How could a 4-chromat get across what they see to a 3 or 2? How could you ever explain to a red-green colorblind 2-chromat guy how you see colors)? How can you image what some bug that seems a lot of UV sees things like. How do you describe to a blind person what red looks like. Heck how do I even know that what I think of as red is even what you think of it even if we are both 3-color, it's pretty weird. It's the weird thing about any sense. If someone can't sense hot or cold how do you describe what they feel like? You can provide spectrum information and kinectic motion and such but I don't know how you explain what they look or feel like in the perceptual sense.

[Nigel Johnson]

LenR,

Can you please tell us what the 'Nine Irrefutable Laws of Colors' are? Like others I have tried to find them on the internet without success.

Regards,
Nigel

[Martin Kristiansen]

Is this not a properties of light thing.

I was taught what I seem to remember as the 9 properties of light at some point.

Light travels in straight lines.
Light can be reflected.
Light can be absorbed.
Light can be refracted
Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection.
Light can be dispersed

That type of thing.

[Jim Pascoe]

Is this not a properties of light thing.

I was taught what I seem to remember as the 9 properties of light at some point.

Light travels in straight lines.
Light can be reflected.
Light can be absorbed.
Light can be refracted
Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection.
Light can be dispersed

That type of thing.

That's only six - and no mention of colour either.  It would have been most simple if the OP could have just posted the Nine Rules.  A bit like talking about the Ten Commandments to an atheist without telling them what they are...!

Maybe it's more like pink for girls, blue for boys, black for witches, white for virgins..... I think I'll stop there.

Jim

[digitaldog]

That's only six - and no mention of colour either. 

Exactly, good catch! Those are properties of light. No mention of color for good reason.

[digitaldog]

A bit like talking about the Ten Commandments to an atheist without telling them what they are...!

Did you hear about the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac that stayed awake all night wondering if Dog really exists?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Good thing I couldn't understand a thing of the impossible-to-define-colors blabbering of our esteemed nerds... after all, all those words are just a bunch of photons hitting my retina... who could make a sense of it? And bumblebees could not possibly fly, according to equally esteemed aeronautical engineers. 

[Jim Kasson]

Good thing I couldn't understand a thing of the impossible-to-define-colors blabbering of our esteemed nerds... after all, all those words are just a bunch of photons hitting my retina... who could make a sense of it? And bumblebees could not possibly fly, according to equally esteemed aeronautical engineers. 

http://www.snopes.com/science/bumblebees.asp

Jim