Colorimetry

Abstract

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The beauty of the golden sky at sunset, the splendor of peacock feathers, and the glorious spectacle of fireworks are displays of changing color. Our visual sense is greatly enriched by our perception and appreciation of colors. Although our color perception seems to be direct and effortless, it is a very interesting subject of immense complexity, as are other aspects of our visual perception. In the last 70 years, we have made a lot of progress in understanding the physics, chemistry, optics, physiology, psychophysics, anatomy, neural science, and molecular biology of human color vision, but we are still very far from being able to describe exactly how it works. Therefore, practical use of color requires certain empirical rules. These rules, which are by no means perfect, are based on many years of experimentation and observation, and they form the empirical foundation of colorimetry, the science of measuring color.