physical colors and Mathematica colors
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg26392] physical colors and Mathematica colors
- From: PNichols at cornell-iowa.edu
- Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 02:40:19 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Dear Group, I am working on a package for which I need a function which takes a wavelength of light (in nanometers, for example) and returns an RGBColor specification. Has anyone made such a function for Mathematica? Of course, it is not essential that the result be RGBColor; any other standard computer-graphics color model would do the job (HSB, HLS, CMY, CMYK, etc.), because the conversions are standard. It's only the conversion between one of these and physical wavelengths which I don't know. I understand that human color perception is a complicated matter, and so is rendering of color on computer display devices. (The brightness dimension is perhaps the most obvious ambiguity.) It's probably nonsense to ask for a "perfect" correspondence between wavelength and RGB. But is there a "standard" mapping? Or one that you think is "pretty good"? I shall be grateful for even the smallest suggestions. Preston Nichols Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Cornell College