Colour: what we like vs what is accurate

myotis

myotis

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I've mentioned this a few times in posts on here, but this looks to be a useful read and video, posted on Fuji Rumours.

I can't read it because it's one of those sites that has more pop-ups than my poor Internet connection and my old laptop can cope with, and it just freezes up - but it looks interesting.

I'll look at it eventually on my desktop.


www.fujirumors.com

The Fujifilm Paradox - The Most Loved Colors with The Worst Accuracy? - Fuji Rumors

Color Accuracy Gerald Undone posted a video about which brand has the most accurate colors (video at the bottom of this article). He also makes clear: more accurate does not mean better. “It’s not wrong if you prefer the look of less color accurate images, Art does not have to be correct.” He...
www.fujirumors.com www.fujirumors.com
 
Quite a big kick back against fake content be that colours or whatever by younger people.

Going forward accurate is going to be wanted by clients much more than pleasing.
 
Dxomark has a colour accuracy score under each camera's measurements. The highest score I've seen is the magnificent Canon 1000D, which scores 88. Most other cameras are in the 75-80 range. The pictures on the back of the camera's cheap screen are terrible but the files are great. This is probably totally useless information unless someone is converting slides straight to jpegs.
 
There was an article in, I think, Scientific American many years ago about colour perception which came to the conclusion that many people experience colour quite differently from others.

I do know that a long time friend and fellow photographer, had a very profitable part time job in a local brick making factory. He apparently had "perfect red" vision and was well paid to judge when the bricks needed to be moved from heating to cooling.
 
Erty said:
Dxomark has a colour accuracy score under each camera's measurements. The highest score I've seen is the magnificent Canon 1000D, which scores 88. Most other cameras are in the 75-80 range. The pictures on the back of the camera's cheap screen are terrible but the files are great. This is probably totally useless information unless someone is converting slides straight to jpegs.
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I may be a bit dim, but where are you seeing this score?

I'm interested to see what they mean by accuracy, what it is they are measuring, and this relates to the camera output.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
There was an article in, I think, Scientific American many years ago about colour perception which came to the conclusion that many people experience colour quite differently from others.

I do know that a long time friend and fellow photographer, had a very profitable part time job in a local brick making factory. He apparently had "perfect red" vision and was well paid to judge when the bricks needed to be moved from heating to cooling.
Click to expand...
I've posted this before, but the signal that people's (healthy) eyes transmit to the brain shows little variation from person to person (according to a paper in Nature last year) but there is a lot of variation from person to person in the way the brain interprets these signals. The latter has been known for a long time.

So while you can scientifically measure "accurate" colour, it's probably of limited value in terms of photographs, and experiments have shown that people don't see scientifically accurate colours as "realistic"
 
myotis said:
I may be a bit dim, but where are you seeing this score?

I'm interested to see what they mean by accuracy, what it is they are measuring, and this relates to the camera output.
Click to expand...
Go onto an individual camera, select measurements, select colour response. Just under the 4 graphs there is Sensitivity Metamerism Index. Their tests say they are to ISO 17321, which you could look up.
 
Accurate colour is very much a myth.
It is certainly true that we can measure and produce wavelengths of light very accurately.
However that has only a limited relationship to our perception of colour.
We can perceive the colours of a person by artificial light as being the same as we saw them earlier in the day by sunlight, whilst if we had measured the individual items they would have been very different wave lengths.

Photography has the tough task of repeating this phenomenon by adjusting the white point of the image in a realistic manner.
Coloured objects do not have a fixed colour, the colour we see and measure is dependent on the colour of the light illuminating the subject.
Some camera sensors and processors achieve this process more to our liking, more often than others.
Accuracy does not come into it.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
many people experience colour quite differently from others
Click to expand...
myotis said:
the signal that people's (healthy) eyes transmit to the brain shows little variation from person to person (according to a paper in Nature last year) but there is a lot of variation from person to person in the way the brain interprets these signals
Click to expand...
My eyes see colour quite differently (& always have done)!
 
Since most amateur photographers take images for themselves I do not see the point of having something accurate that you do not like, its like audiophiles who want their system to sound accurate not the sound they like.

EDIT. My brain definitely reproduces colour slightly different, when doing the 52 many people said my images had a tint, I just could not see it!
 
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Erty said:
Go onto an individual camera, select measurements, select colour response. Just under the 4 graphs there is Sensitivity Metamerism Index. Their tests say they are to ISO 17321, which you could look up.
Click to expand...
I see it now.

However, the important bit when looking at these numbers is:

"The underlying physics is that a sensor can distinguish exactly the same colors as the average human eye, if and only if the spectral responses of the sensor can be obtained by a linear combination of the eye cone responses. These conditions are called Luther-Ives conditions, and in practice, these never occur. There are objects that a sensor sees as having certain colors, while the eye sees the same objects differently, and the reverse is also true."
www.dxomark.com

Color depth

The number of colors that can be coded as digital values. A color channel coded on 8 bits, for example, can represent 256 different values.
www.dxomark.com www.dxomark.com
 
Baloo said:
Since most amateur photographers take images for themselves I do not see the point of having something accurate that you do not like, its like audiophiles who want their system to sound accurate not the sound they like.
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Not just amateur photographers. With the exception of scientific photography, every professional photographer needs to produce colours that please their clients, not colours that are scientifically accurate.

There are of course situations with things like product photographs where colour accuracy might be expected, but given every customer is going to perceive colours differently, will probably be looking at them on an uncalibrated monitor, and once they arrive are going to look at them in a range of different lighting conditions, accuracy is a rather futile exercise. It's only ever going to be, hopefully, "near enough".
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
Accurate colour is very much a myth.
It is certainly true that we can measure and produce wavelengths of light very accurately.
However that has only a limited relationship to our perception of colour.
We can perceive the colours of a person by artificial light as being the same as we saw them earlier in the day by sunlight, whilst if we had measured the individual items they would have been very different wave lengths.

Photography has the tough task of repeating this phenomenon by adjusting the white point of the image in a realistic manner.
Coloured objects do not have a fixed colour, the colour we see and measure is dependent on the colour of the light illuminating the subject.
Some camera sensors and processors achieve this process more to our liking, more often than others.
Accuracy does not come into it.
Click to expand...
And of course, adjusting the white point, doesn't mean the other colours in the picture are accurate, and is that white really white.
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
May be not I have had a cataract done in one eye and not the other, one gives a yellow tint, the other by comparison blue, with both things seem normal that is the brain sorting things out.
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I did actually mention this type of exception in my post on the Nature paper on how the eyes interact with the brain. But it reinforces how much the brain controls what we see and how we see it.
 
I once tried getting a photograph that worked for a colour blind person. unfortunately it didn't work. The best I came up with was giving them a black and white print
 
munch said:
I once tried getting a photograph that worked for a colour blind person. unfortunately it didn't work. The best I came up with was giving them a black and white print
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One of my colleagues created a monitor profile that allowed a colour blind student to successfully complete a degree in GIS.
 
munch said:
I once tried getting a photograph that worked for a colour blind person. unfortunately it didn't work. The best I came up with was giving them a black and white print
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When I was. A photography student in the 50's one of. My fellow students was near completely colour blind. In those days photography was largely reproduced in black and white, and our limited attention for colour was to dye transfer printing and colour slides. This being so, this student demonstrated some clear advantages in his black and white work. While his dress sense was completely bizarre and out of this world
 
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I've always preferred accurate/true to life over pleasing to the eye in the past, however in the last few months I've moved away from this and now prefer more of a film look. I'm sure this will change again in the future and I'll likely end up re-editing my current pics as they don't represent accurate colours :headbang: :ROFLMAO:
 
snerkler said:
I've always preferred accurate/true to life over pleasing to the eye in the past, however in the last few months I've moved away from this and now prefer more of a film look. I'm sure this will change again in the future and I'll likely end up re-editing my current pics as they don't represent accurate colours :headbang: :ROFLMAO:
Click to expand...

I almost always preferred colour slides to be taken with a warm up filter applied. This was true for most customers as well.
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
May be not I have had a cataract done in one eye and not the other, one gives a yellow tint, the other by comparison blue, with both things seem normal that is the brain sorting things out.
Click to expand...
Exactly my experience.
I had my right eye done last November and from then on the left had a yellow tint and the right had a blue, colder tint and much brighter as more light was being let in.
I had my left eye done last week and it now matches the right eye in that all colours are more blue and cooler and the world is a lot brighter.
 
I’ve always been slightly colour blind to certain tones but as I only produce prints for myself it’s never been a problem.
 
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