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Purple exists only in our brains...The color is our brain’s solution to a puzzling problem
Science News Explores ^ | January 28, 2025 | Tammy Awtry

Posted on 02/03/2025 6:36:50 PM PST by Red Badger

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To: TexasGator

I was ONLY talking about “under standard light”; NOT under different light conditions. Good grief, I DO know what I’m talking about, re painting, paints,and color theory.


121 posted on 02/03/2025 9:00:26 PM PST by nopardons
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To: Jamestown1630; SunkenCiv
Homer the Blind poet (if tradition is correct) gives the description of "Wine dark Sea" Is he remembering or relying on a sighted informant? The Hue? Or Chroma?

What name did Achilles take when he was amount the women? Imponderables.

122 posted on 02/03/2025 9:00:58 PM PST by Pete from Shawnee Mission
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To: TexasGator

The examples in the article; the fruits & veggies and the spectrum chart.


123 posted on 02/03/2025 9:02:46 PM PST by nopardons
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To: fishtank

Magenta on my computer.


124 posted on 02/03/2025 9:04:33 PM PST by Pete from Shawnee Mission
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To: nopardons

“The examples in the article; the fruits & veggies and the spectrum chart.”

The first is not a specific example. Just a stock photo.

Each monitor is different. Take a photo of your pigment and display it on your monitor. It will look a different color.


125 posted on 02/03/2025 9:11:24 PM PST by TexasGator (11'r/11111.111''!11)
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To: Pete from Shawnee Mission

‘Wine dark’ (which could also have been written ‘wine faced’) could apparently have been interpreted as meaning something other than color. It could simply have had to do with light and dark.

It’s an interesting problem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea


126 posted on 02/03/2025 9:12:37 PM PST by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: Jamestown1630
"Can we just be happy that Purple exists as the lovely mystery (or not) that it is?"

Best comment on the thread! (Goodnight!)


127 posted on 02/03/2025 9:13:28 PM PST by Pete from Shawnee Mission
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To: Pete from Shawnee Mission

Very lovely.

(Are we sure that’s purple, though, and not violet?)

Sweet Dreams :-)


128 posted on 02/03/2025 9:16:27 PM PST by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: nopardons

“I was ONLY talking about “under standard light”

Maybe the photo you saw of the veggies was not taken under a standard light.

Maybe the camera taking the photos had sensors not 100% calibrated to the eye.

Maybe the camera imaging processing resulted in color shifts.


129 posted on 02/03/2025 9:17:04 PM PST by TexasGator (11'r/11111.111''!11)
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To: dayglored
Sorry, I did miss your comment.

Okay, as a painter, I have painted, inside, in the daytime with only light from outside coming in and in the evening, with an overhead light fixture.

I have also done plein air painting, which is a different kind of light, because it is direct sunlight, which may or may not hit the paper and/or the landscape that I'm painting. In plein air, one can and usually does, get up close to the tree, flower, grass, whatever, to check color, textures, minute details ( botanical work is often detail happy! ), so yes, different kinds of light, different times of day/night, but I don't see the difference.

If I mix every color ( though painters usually do NOT do that to get black ) yes, it will come out sort of black, IF I omit Titanium, Buff, and/or Chinese White.

Under NO circumstances, that I work under, can I mix all colors and get white.

And...most watercolorists DO NOT use white paint. If we do, it is NOT the white watercolor; it's Dr. Ph Martin's BLEED PROOF paint. The other way we get white, is to use masking fluid, so that when that substance is removed, the sterile, white paper is exposed. But....since most white things or highlights are NOT pure white, we use a different method, entirely, which is using the MOST watered down paint to differentiate certain portions of the subject, leaving white paper areas exposed.

LOL...probably too much info above and perhaps NOT the answer you were looking for. But it's the best I can do.

130 posted on 02/03/2025 9:25:36 PM PST by nopardons
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To: TexasGator

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm...I have taken pictures of some of my paintings and have seen them on my laptop. The colors are the same.


131 posted on 02/03/2025 9:28:47 PM PST by nopardons
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To: TexasGator; nopardons
> Each monitor is different. Take a photo of your pigment and display it on your monitor. It will look a different color.

That's true but it's not primarily due to monitor differences.

The pigment exhibits subtractive color. The monitor produces additive color. The two are fundamentally different -- you cannot produce a true (exact match) additive color with subtractive pigments, just as (as you example shows) you cannot produce a true (exact match) subtractive color with additive sources.

You can get REAL close for specific instances, but it's a fundamentally unsolvable problem in the general case.

Do you guys know any optical physics at all, or are you just trolling each other into oblivion? I'm beginning to suspect the latter. :-)

132 posted on 02/03/2025 9:31:14 PM PST by dayglored (This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalms 118:24)
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To: Jamestown1630
Some are purple, some are Dioxazine Violet, a few here and there are Daniel Smith's version of lavender,and some are Cobalt Violet by Lukas. :-)

It's a lovely picture!

133 posted on 02/03/2025 9:34:52 PM PST by nopardons
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To: nopardons
> LOL...probably too much info above and perhaps NOT the answer you were looking for. But it's the best I can do.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

White pigment paint absorbs no visible wavelengths which is why it not only appears "white", but also why surfaces painted white don't get hot in the sun, whereas surfaces painted black absorb all the visible wavelengths which is why they get hot in the sun.

That is the very definition of "reflective color".

134 posted on 02/03/2025 9:35:12 PM PST by dayglored (This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalms 118:24)
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To: TexasGator
Perhaps, I don't know the answer to that.

Do see my reply to dayglored #130.

135 posted on 02/03/2025 9:36:31 PM PST by nopardons
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To: dayglored

I’m NOT “trolling”; but do think that I am being TROLLED.


136 posted on 02/03/2025 9:39:21 PM PST by nopardons
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To: dayglored
Oh I DO know about why people aren't supposed to wear dark colors and black in the hot sun! That used to to be just plain old common knowledge and I've know that since I was a child. But thanks for the info anyway, even IF I knew and understand it.

Re painting...Except for a certain era and school of art, re Dutch painters, black has not generally used in oil or watercolor painting for centuries. Shadows are usually some form of grey or a much darker color than the subject.

There are exceptions and the granulating blacks, in watercolor, when used very sparingly ( usually added to another color ) is due to granulation. LOL...just some useless but I think interesting info.

137 posted on 02/03/2025 9:48:07 PM PST by nopardons
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To: Pete from Shawnee Mission

Like performing bards down through the ages, he relied on repeated images pad the meter and reduce the sheer amount of memorization. A modern scholar (not even a clue who it was at this point) memorized the Iliad and could recite the whole thing (in Greek? English? dunno that either) except for the catalog of ships, but he said he could relearn that at any time. That’s strictly an historically useful bit of the text, but doesn’t have much mnemonic formula.

Sidebar — One scholar of Homer teased that the poet’s use of “rosy-fingered dawn” could, due to the contextual nature of ancient Greek, be just as easily translated as “pink-toed dawn”. :^)


138 posted on 02/03/2025 9:48:37 PM PST by SunkenCiv (The Demagogic Party is a collection of violent, rival street gangs.)
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To: metmom

That it does indeed AND you can buy paints that are magenta, so you don’t have to mix that color. I have a set that DOES contain a magenta; but besides swatching it, I’ve NEVER used that color.


139 posted on 02/03/2025 9:51:58 PM PST by nopardons
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To: nopardons
BTW, as an artist I'm sure you're aware that since the development of television video displays and later, computer monitors, it has been a huge field of research and study to come up with a scheme for the displays/monitors that can produce accurate colors of reflected (subtractive) objects.

There are, as you no doubt know, many proposed mechanisms to translate between pigment colors and RGB monitor signals (e.g. Pantone). Artists who work on computers for websites have faced this problem for a few decades, and it's still not a solved problem -- there are only approximations.

Take an apple. Paint a picture of it. Take a photo of the painting. Display it on a monitor. Print it out on a high-quality color laser printer. They'll all be subtly different.

For millennia, humans experienced almost all colors as reflected light -- a sunlit garden, an apple tree, the face of a lover -- and our brains got very good at discerning color that way. The only additive light sources were the Sun (and you better not look directly at it), fire, lightning, fireflies, etc. which are all very transient. Even electric light bulbs -- who stares at a lightbulb expecting to see something? We only use it to illuminate reflective objects.

The introduction of TV displays and computer monitors changed that, and transmitted light sources are now common everywhere. Artists are still tearing their hair out trying to get a computer image to look exactly like their pigment-based creation.

As one trained in physics, but having many family and friends who are artists, I have watched this evolution for the past decades with great interest.

140 posted on 02/03/2025 9:52:19 PM PST by dayglored (This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalms 118:24)
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