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Author Topic: Observing and Managing Color: Dealing with Color Vision Anomalies  (Read 2352 times)

amolitor

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What a refreshing piece.

The author doesn't gently steps around the issue to a degree, but makes it clear that there are.. issues with color management.

Color management makes certain that, for a standard observer, the picture will look the same on the screen as on the print, or as near as possible. Color management vendors and proponents tend to ignore:

- basically nobody is actually a "standard observer", although most of us are quite close
- making sure that the screen matches the print is NOT the same as making sure that either one of those matches the objects that were in front of the lens

Color management does a thing, but that thing is but a piece of the puzzle, and a surprisingly narrow one at that.
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Telecaster

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Re: Observing and Managing Color: Dealing with Color Vision Anomalies
« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2014, 05:55:58 pm »

What a refreshing piece.

Color management makes certain that, for a standard observer, the picture will look the same on the screen as on the print, or as near as possible. Color management vendors and proponents tend to ignore:

- basically nobody is actually a "standard observer", although most of us are quite close
- making sure that the screen matches the print is NOT the same as making sure that either one of those matches the objects that were in front of the lens

Color management does a thing, but that thing is but a piece of the puzzle, and a surprisingly narrow one at that.

Yes, a good article. IMO trying to match "the objects that were in front of the lens" with a print or screen image is a meaningless pursuit. The article is in large part about the subjectivity of vision, color in particular, whereas attempts to match "reality" assume that an objective photographic representation is possible. It's not. This is creatively freeing, or at least it should be. You can try to make a photo look like "how I saw it" without any pretense of reproducing objective reality. Or you can make a photo look like "how I wish I'd seen it" or "how I imagine it looking if I could see it in the ultraviolet spectrum" or…etc. All equally valid.

-Dave-
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amolitor

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Re: Observing and Managing Color: Dealing with Color Vision Anomalies
« Reply #2 on: December 16, 2014, 05:58:39 pm »

Interesting! That was precisely my reaction to learning and experimenting with, roughly, these same things a while back. I decided it was a fool's game to try for fidelity, and that I was thus free of the obligation to really try ;)

(of course, I mostly to b&w anyways..)
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digitaldog

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Re: Observing and Managing Color: Dealing with Color Vision Anomalies
« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2014, 07:07:14 pm »

Color management makes certain that, for a standard observer, the picture will look the same on the screen as on the print, or as near as possible. Color management vendors and proponents tend to ignore:

- basically nobody is actually a "standard observer", although most of us are quite close
- making sure that the screen matches the print is NOT the same as making sure that either one of those matches the objects that were in front of the lens

Color management does a thing, but that thing is but a piece of the puzzle, and a surprisingly narrow one at that.
It's even more complex and worse than that. The standard observer is based on many individuals (all men) who examined under very precise conditions, solid colors. A photograph is far more complex than that as well all know. Today's Color Management isn't based on appearance models and make some strict assumptions about the illuminant and so forth. Color management today is more like number management. Again based on a single color sample. As such, when we work on our computers and are working with say R45/G0/B0, we know it's 'reddish' but what should that one value appear like? By associating a color space to the numbers, they have a meaning but not necessarily a color appearance. 

What a camera captures is way, way more complex when you start examining they don't have a gamut but a color mixing function, there are 'colors' it can capture we can't see and colors we can see it can't capture or that again, it all boils down to million's of solid pixels with a set of numbers using a  CMS that has no idea about the colors in context. You see a lovely image in Photoshop, Photoshop treats each of the pixels as one set of values without having any idea how adjacent pixels will appear or the effect on the viewer. It is actually pretty amazing any of this works at all!

Color Management can predict that a set of values on the display and a print should match but guess what, there are all kinds of issues that produce a mismatch. Case in point is how a so called  D50 viewing booth and a display calibrated to presumably D50 don't match.
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Author "Color Management for Photographers".

Charles Johnson

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Re: Observing and Managing Color: Dealing with Color Vision Anomalies
« Reply #4 on: December 26, 2014, 02:31:03 pm »

I did not discuss the effects of cataracts on the color perception of aging photographers.  That and other visual problems associated with aging are discussed in the book, "The Artist's Eyes."  The authors, Michael Marmor and James Ravin, are both ophthalmologists; and they consider in detail the effects of aging on the work of artists from antiquity to modern times.  Their book is a good read, and it is beautifully illustrated.
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G*

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Re: Observing and Managing Color: Dealing with Color Vision Anomalies
« Reply #5 on: December 28, 2014, 12:09:15 pm »

Very good read indeed. Actually, I would like to encourage Michael and Kevin to publish similar contributions more often.

One question that came to my mind:
is there a way to put in words how large the difference of perception between the two "red" types is and whether there is some kind of layman’s test to find out what type of red sensors a person has?
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