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Category: colour

  • No one could see the colour blue until modern times

    pIXELsHAM.com

    https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2

     

    The way that humans see the world… until we have a way to describe something, even something so fundamental as a colour, we may not even notice that something it’s there.

     

    Ancient languages didn’t have a word for blue — not Greek, not Chinese, not Japanese, not Hebrew, not Icelandic cultures. And without a word for the colour, there’s evidence that they may not have seen it at all.

    https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/211119-colors

     

    Every language first had a word for black and for white, or dark and light. The next word for a colour to come into existence — in every language studied around the world — was red, the colour of blood and wine.

    After red, historically, yellow appears, and later, green (though in a couple of languages, yellow and green switch places). The last of these colours to appear in every language is blue.

     

    The only ancient culture to develop a word for blue was the Egyptians — and as it happens, they were also the only culture that had a way to produce a blue dye.

    https://mymodernmet.com/shades-of-blue-color-history/

     

    Considered to be the first ever synthetically produced color pigment, Egyptian blue (also known as cuprorivaite) was created around 2,200 B.C. It was made from ground limestone mixed with sand and a copper-containing mineral, such as azurite or malachite, which was then heated between 1470 and 1650°F. The result was an opaque blue glass which then had to be crushed and combined with thickening agents such as egg whites to create a long-lasting paint or glaze.

     

     

    If you think about it, blue doesn’t appear much in nature — there aren’t animals with blue pigments (except for one butterfly, Obrina Olivewing, all animals generate blue through light scattering), blue eyes are rare (also blue through light scattering), and blue flowers are mostly human creations. There is, of course, the sky, but is that really blue?

     

     

    So before we had a word for it, did people not naturally see blue? Do you really see something if you don’t have a word for it?

     

    A researcher named Jules Davidoff traveled to Namibia to investigate this, where he conducted an experiment with the Himba tribe, who speak a language that has no word for blue or distinction between blue and green. When shown a circle with 11 green squares and one blue, they couldn’t pick out which one was different from the others.

     

    When looking at a circle of green squares with only one slightly different shade, they could immediately spot the different one. Can you?

     

    Davidoff says that without a word for a colour, without a way of identifying it as different, it’s much harder for us to notice what’s unique about it — even though our eyes are physically seeing the blocks it in the same way.

     

    Further research brought to wider discussions about color perception in humans. Everything that we make is based on the fact that humans are trichromatic. The television only has 3 colors. Our color printers have 3 different colors. But some people, and in specific some women seemed to be more sensible to color differences… mainly because they’re just more aware or – because of the job that they do.

    Eventually this brought to the discovery of a small percentage of the population, referred to as tetrachromats, which developed an extra cone sensitivity to yellow, likely due to gene modifications.

    The interesting detail about these is that even between tetrachromats, only the ones that had a reason to develop, label and work with extra color sensitivity actually developed the ability to use their native skills.

     

    So before blue became a common concept, maybe humans saw it. But it seems they didn’t know they were seeing it.

    If you see something yet can’t see it, does it exist? Did colours come into existence over time? Not technically, but our ability to notice them… may have…

     

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  • Working with color, lighting and LUTs || Ben Davis

    pIXELsHAM.com

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  • The colors of the sky and the sun

    pIXELsHAM.com

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  • The surprising pattern behind color names around the world

    pIXELsHAM.com

    Views : 1,040

  • Weta Digital – Manuka Raytracer and Gazebo GPU renderers – pipeline

    pIXELsHAM.com

    https://jo.dreggn.org/home/2018_manuka.pdf

     

    http://www.fxguide.com/featured/manuka-weta-digitals-new-renderer/

     

    The Manuka rendering architecture has been designed in the spirit of the classic reyes rendering architecture. In its core, reyes is based on stochastic rasterisation of micropolygons, facilitating depth of field, motion blur, high geometric complexity,and programmable shading.

     

    This is commonly achieved with Monte Carlo path tracing, using a paradigm often called shade-on-hit, in which the renderer alternates tracing rays with running shaders on the various ray hits. The shaders take the role of generating the inputs of the local material structure which is then used bypath sampling logic to evaluate contributions and to inform what further rays to cast through the scene.

     

    Over the years, however, the expectations have risen substantially when it comes to image quality. Computing pictures which are indistinguishable from real footage requires accurate simulation of light transport, which is most often performed using some variant of Monte Carlo path tracing. Unfortunately this paradigm requires random memory accesses to the whole scene and does not lend itself well to a rasterisation approach at all.

     

    Manuka is both a uni-directional and bidirectional path tracer and encompasses multiple importance sampling (MIS). Interestingly, and importantly for production character skin work, it is the first major production renderer to incorporate spectral MIS in the form of a new ‘Hero Spectral Sampling’ technique, which was recently published at Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2014.

     

    Manuka propose a shade-before-hit paradigm in-stead and minimise I/O strain (and some memory costs) on the system, leveraging locality of reference by running pattern generation shaders before we execute light transport simulation by path sampling, “compressing” any bvh structure as needed, and as such also limiting duplication of source data.
    The difference with reyes is that instead of baking colors into the geometry like in Reyes, manuka bakes surface closures. This means that light transport is still calculated with path tracing, but all texture lookups etc. are done up-front and baked into the geometry.

     

    The main drawback with this method is that geometry has to be tessellated to its highest, stable topology before shading can be evaluated properly. As such, the high cost to first pixel. Even a basic 4 vertices square becomes a much more complex model with this approach.

     

     

    Manuka use the RenderMan Shading Language (rsl) for programmable shading [Pixar Animation Studios 2015], but we do not invoke rsl shaders when intersecting a ray with a surface (often called shade-on-hit). Instead, we pre-tessellate and pre-shade all the input geometry in the front end of the renderer.
    This way, we can efficiently order shading computations to sup-port near-optimal texture locality, vectorisation, and parallelism. This system avoids repeated evaluation of shaders at the same surface point, and presents a minimal amount of memory to be accessed during light transport time. An added benefit is that the acceleration structure for ray tracing (abounding volume hierarchy, bvh) is built once on the final tessellated geometry, which allows us to ray trace more efficiently than multi-level bvhs and avoids costly caching of on-demand tessellated micropolygons and the associated scheduling issues.

     

    For the shading reasons above, in terms of AOVs, the studio approach is to succeed at combining complex shading with ray paths in the render rather than pass a multi-pass render to compositing.

     

    For the Spectral Rendering component. The light transport stage is fully spectral, using a continuously sampled wavelength which is traced with each path and used to apply the spectral camera sensitivity of the sensor. This allows for faithfully support any degree of observer metamerism as the camera footage they are intended to match as well as complex materials which require wavelength dependent phenomena such as diffraction, dispersion, interference, iridescence, or chromatic extinction and Rayleigh scattering in participating media.

     

    As opposed to the original reyes paper, we use bilinear interpolation of these bsdf inputs later when evaluating bsdfs per pathv ertex during light transport4. This improves temporal stability of geometry which moves very slowly with respect to the pixel raster

     

    In terms of the pipeline, everything rendered at Weta was already completely interwoven with their deep data pipeline. Manuka very much was written with deep data in mind. Here, Manuka not so much extends the deep capabilities, rather it fully matches the already extremely complex and powerful setup Weta Digital already enjoy with RenderMan. For example, an ape in a scene can be selected, its ID is available and a NUKE artist can then paint in 3D say a hand and part of the way up the neutral posed ape.

     

    We called our system Manuka, as a respectful nod to reyes: we had heard a story froma former ILM employee about how reyes got its name from how fond the early Pixar people were of their lunches at Point Reyes, and decided to name our system after our surrounding natural environment, too. Manuka is a kind of tea tree very common in New Zealand which has very many very small leaves, in analogy to micropolygons ina tree structure for ray tracing. It also happens to be the case that Weta Digital’s main site is on Manuka Street.

     

     

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  • Rec-2020 – TVs new color gamut standard used by Dolby Vision?

    pIXELsHAM.com

    https://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html#bit-depth

     

    The dynamic range is a ratio between the maximum and minimum values of a physical measurement. Its definition depends on what the dynamic range refers to.

    For a scene: Dynamic range is the ratio between the brightest and darkest parts of the scene.

    For a camera: Dynamic range is the ratio of saturation to noise. More specifically, the ratio of the intensity that just saturates the camera to the intensity that just lifts the camera response one standard deviation above camera noise.

    For a display: Dynamic range is the ratio between the maximum and minimum intensities emitted from the screen.

     

    The Dynamic Range of real-world scenes can be quite high — ratios of 100,000:1 are common in the natural world. An HDR (High Dynamic Range) image stores pixel values that span the whole tonal range of real-world scenes. Therefore, an HDR image is encoded in a format that allows the largest range of values, e.g. floating-point values stored with 32 bits per color channel. Another characteristics of an HDR image is that it stores linear values. This means that the value of a pixel from an HDR image is proportional to the amount of light measured by the camera.

     

    For TVs HDR is great, but it’s not the only new TV feature worth discussing.

     

    Wide color gamut, or WCG, is often lumped in with HDR. While they’re often found together, they’re not intrinsically linked. Where HDR is an increase in the dynamic range of the picture (with contrast and brighter highlights in particular), a TV’s wide color gamut coverage refers to how much of the new, larger color gamuts a TV can display.

     

    Wide color gamuts only really matter for HDR video sources like UHD Blu-rays and some streaming video, as only HDR sources are meant to take advantage of the ability to display more colors.

     

     

    www.cnet.com/how-to/what-is-wide-color-gamut-wcg/

     

    Color depth is only one aspect of color representation, expressing the precision with which the amount of each primary can be expressed through a pixel; the other aspect is how broad a range of colors can be expressed (the gamut)

     

    Image rendering bit depth

     

    Wide color gamuts include a greater number of colors than what most current TVs can display, so the greater a TV’s coverage of a wide color gamut, the more colors a TV will be able to reproduce.

     

    When we talk about a color space or color gamut we refer to the range of color values stored in an image. The perception of these color also requires a display that has been tuned with to resolve these color profiles at best. This is often referred to as a ‘viewer lut’.

     

    So this comes also usually paired with an increase in bit depth, going from the old 8 bit system (256 shades per color, with the potential of over 16.7 million colors: 256 green x 256 blue x 256 red) to 10  (1024+ shades per color, with access to over a billion colors) or higher bits, like 12 bit (4096 shades per RGB for 68 billion colors).

    The advantage of higher bit depth is in the ability to bias color with the minimum loss.

    https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/72116/whats-the-point-of-capturing-14-bit-images-and-editing-on-8-bit-monitors

     

    For an extreme example, raising the brightness from a completely dark image allows for better reproduction, independently on the reproduction medium, due to the amount of data available at editing time:

     

    https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/dynamic-range.htm

     

    https://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html#bit-depth

     

    Note that the number of bits itself may be a misleading indication of the real dynamic range that the image reproduces — converting a Low Dynamic Range image to a higher bit depth does not change its dynamic range, of course.

    • 8-bit images (i.e. 24 bits per pixel for a color image) are considered Low Dynamic Range.
    • 16-bit images (i.e. 48 bits per pixel for a color image) resulting from RAW conversion are still considered Low Dynamic Range, even though the range of values they can encode is significantly higher than for 8-bit images (65536 versus 256). Note that converting a RAW file involves applying a tonal curve that compresses the dynamic range of the RAW data so that the converted image shows correctly on low dynamic range monitors. The need to adapt the output image file to the dynamic range of the display is the factor that dictates how much the dynamic range is compressed, not the output bit-depth. By using 16 instead of 8 bits, you will gain precision but you will not gain dynamic range.
    • 32-bit images (i.e. 96 bits per pixel for a color image) are considered High Dynamic Range.Unlike 8- and 16-bit images which can take a finite number of values, 32-bit images are coded using floating point numbers, which means the values they can take is unlimited.It is important to note, though, that storing an image in a 32-bit HDR format is a necessary condition for an HDR image but not a sufficient one. When an image comes from a single capture with a standard camera, it will remain a Low Dynamic Range image,

     

     

    Also note that bit depth and dynamic range are often confused as one, but are indeed separate concepts and there is no direct one to one relationship between them. Bit depth is about capacity, dynamic range is about the actual ratio of data stored.
    The bit depth of a capturing or displaying device gives you an indication of its dynamic range capacity. That is, the highest dynamic range that the device would be capable of reproducing if all other constraints are eliminated.

     

    https://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Bit_Depth

     

    Finally, note that there are two ways to “count” bits for an image — either the number of bits per color channel (BPC) or the number of bits per pixel (BPP). A bit (0,1) is the smallest unit of data stored in a computer.

    For a grayscale image, 8-bit means that each pixel can be one of 256 levels of gray (256 is 2 to the power 8).

    For an RGB color image, 8-bit means that each one of the three color channels can be one of 256 levels of color.
    Since each pixel is represented by 3 colors in this case, 8-bit per color channel actually means 24-bit per pixel.

    Similarly, 16-bit for an RGB image means 65,536 levels per color channel and 48-bit per pixel.

    To complicate matters, when an image is classified as 16-bit, it just means that it can store a maximum 65,535 values. It does not necessarily mean that it actually spans that range. If the camera sensors can not capture more than 12 bits of tonal values, the actual bit depth of the image will be at best 12-bit and probably less because of noise.

    The following table attempts to summarize the above for the case of an RGB color image.

     

     

    Type of digital support Bit depth per color channel Bit depth per pixel FStops Theoretical maximum Dynamic Range Reality
    8-bit 8 24 8 256:1 most consumer images
    12-bit CCD 12 36 12 4,096:1 real maximum limited by noise
    14-bit CCD 14 42 14 16,384:1 real maximum limited by noise
    16-bit TIFF (integer) 16 48 16 65,536:1 bit-depth in this case is not directly related to the dynamic range captured
    16-bit float EXR 16 48 30 65,536:1 values are distributed more closely in the (lower) darker tones than in the (higher) lighter ones, thus allowing for a more accurate description of the tones more significant to humans. The range of normalized 16-bit floats can represent thirty stops of information with 1024 steps per stop. We have eighteen and a half stops over middle gray, and eleven and a half below. The denormalized numbers provide an additional ten stops with decreasing precision per stop.
    http://download.nvidia.com/developer/GPU_Gems/CD_Image/Image_Processing/OpenEXR/OpenEXR-1.0.6/doc/#recs
    HDR image (e.g. Radiance format) 32 96 “infinite” 4.3 billion:1 real maximum limited by the captured dynamic range

    32-bit floats are often called “single-precision” floats, and 64-bit floats are often called “double-precision” floats. 16-bit floats therefore are called “half-precision” floats, or just “half floats”.

     

    https://petapixel.com/2018/09/19/8-12-14-vs-16-bit-depth-what-do-you-really-need/

    On a separate note, even Photoshop does not handle 16bit per channel. Photoshop does actually use 16-bits per channel. However, it treats the 16th digit differently – it is simply added to the value created from the first 15-digits. This is sometimes called 15+1 bits. This means that instead of 216 possible values (which would be 65,536 possible values) there are only 215+1 possible values (which is 32,768 +1 = 32,769 possible values).

     

    Rec-601 (for the older SDTV format, very similar to rec-709) and Rec-709 (the HDTV’s recommended set of color standards, at times also referred to sRGB, although not exactly the same) are currently the most spread color formats and hardware configurations in the world.

     

    Following those you can find the larger P3 gamut, more commonly used in theaters and in digital production houses (with small variations and improvements to color coverage), as well as most of best 4K/WCG TVs.

     

    And a new standard is now promoted against P3, referred to Rec-2020 and UHDTV.

     

    It is still debatable if this is going to be adopted at consumer level beyond the P3, mainly due to lack of hardware supporting it. But initial tests do prove that it would be a future proof investment.

    www.colour-science.org/anders-langlands/

     

    Rec. 2020 is ultimately designed for television, and not cinema. Therefore, it is to be expected that its properties must behave according to current signal processing standards. In this respect, its foundation is based on current HD and SD video signal characteristics.

     

    As far as color bit depth is concerned, it allows for a maximum of 12 bits, which is more than enough for humans.

    Comparing standards, REC-709 covers 35.9% of the human visible spectrum. P3 45.5%. And REC-2020 75.8%.
    https://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lcd-flat-panel-displays/2812161-what-color-volume.html

     

    Comparing coverage to hardware devices

     

    To note that all the new standards generally score very high on the Pointer’s Gamut chart. But with REC-2020 scoring 99.9% vs P3 at 88.2%.
    www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/pointers_gamut.htm

    https://www.slideshare.net/hpduiker/acescg-a-common-color-encoding-for-visual-effects-applications

     

    The Pointer’s gamut is (an approximation of) the gamut of real surface colors as can be seen by the human eye, based on the research by Michael R. Pointer (1980). What this means is that every color that can be reflected by the surface of an object of any material is inside the Pointer’s gamut. Basically establishing a widely respected target for color reproduction. Visually, Pointers Gamut represents the colors we see about us in the natural world. Colors outside Pointers Gamut include those that do not occur naturally, such as neon lights and computer-generated colors possible in animation. Which would partially be accounted for with the new gamuts.

    cinepedia.com/picture/color-gamut/

     

    Not all current TVs can support the full spread of the new gamuts. Here is a list of modern TVs’ color coverage in percentage:
    www.rtings.com/tv/tests/picture-quality/wide-color-gamut-rec-709-dci-p3-rec-2020

     

    There are no TVs that can come close to displaying all the colors within Rec.2020, and there likely won’t be for at least a few years. However, to help future-proof the technology, Rec.2020 support is already baked into the HDR spec. That means that the same genuine HDR media that fills the DCI P3 space on a compatible TV now, will in a few years also fill Rec.2020 on a TV supporting that larger space.

     

    Rec.2020’s main gains are in the number of new tones of green that it will display, though it also offers improvements to the number of blue and red colors as well. Altogether, Rec.2020 will cover about 75% of the visual spectrum, which is a sizeable increase in coverage even over DCI P3.

     

     

    Dolby Vision

    https://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/what-is-dolby-vision/39049

    https://www.techhive.com/article/3237232/dolby-vision-vs-hdr10-which-is-best.html

     

    Dolby Vision is a proprietary end-to-end High Dynamic Range (HDR) format that covers content creation and playback through select cinemas, Ultra HD displays, and 4K titles. Like other HDR standards, the process uses expanded brightness to improve contrast between dark and light aspects of an image, bringing out deeper black levels and more realistic details in specular highlights — like the sun reflecting off of an ocean — in specially graded Dolby Vision material.

     

    The iPhone 12 Pro gets the ability to record 4K 10-bit HDR video. According to Apple, it is the very first smartphone that is capable of capturing Dolby Vision HDR.

    The iPhone 12 Pro takes two separate exposures and runs them through Apple’s custom image signal processor to create a histogram, which is a graph of the tonal values in each frame. The Dolby Vision metadata is then generated based on that histogram. In Laymen’s terms, it is essentially doing real-time grading while you are shooting. This is only possible due to the A14 Bionic chip.

     

    Dolby Vision also allows for 12-bit color, as opposed to HDR10’s and HDR10+’s 10-bit color. While no retail TV we’re aware of supports 12-bit color, Dolby claims it can be down-sampled in such a way as to render 10-bit color more accurately.

     

     

     

     

     

    Resources for more reading:

    https://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lcd-flat-panel-displays/2812161-what-color-volume.html

     

    wolfcrow.com/say-hello-to-rec-2020-the-color-space-of-the-future/

     

    www.cnet.com/news/ultra-hd-tv-color-part-ii-the-future/

     

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  • OLED vs QLED – What TV is better?

    pIXELsHAM.com

     

    Supported by LG, Philips, Panasonic and Sony sell the OLED system TVs.
    OLED stands for “organic light emitting diode.”
    It is a fundamentally different technology from LCD, the major type of TV today.
    OLED is “emissive,” meaning the pixels emit their own light.

     

    Samsung is branding its best TVs with a new acronym: “QLED”
    QLED (according to Samsung) stands for “quantum dot LED TV.”
    It is a variation of the common LED LCD, adding a quantum dot film to the LCD “sandwich.”
    QLED, like LCD, is, in its current form, “transmissive” and relies on an LED backlight.

     

    OLED is the only technology capable of absolute blacks and extremely bright whites on a per-pixel basis. LCD definitely can’t do that, and even the vaunted, beloved, dearly departed plasma couldn’t do absolute blacks.

    QLED, as an improvement over OLED, significantly improves the picture quality. QLED can produce an even wider range of colors than OLED, which says something about this new tech. QLED is also known to produce up to 40% higher luminance efficiency than OLED technology. Further, many tests conclude that QLED is far more efficient in terms of power consumption than its predecessor, OLED.

     

    When analyzing TVs color, it may be beneficial to consider at least 3 elements:
    “Color Depth”, “Color Gamut”, and “Dynamic Range”.

     

    Color Depth (or “Bit-Depth”, e.g. 8-bit, 10-bit, 12-bit) determines how many distinct color variations (tones/shades) can be viewed on a given display.

     

    Color Gamut (e.g. WCG) determines which specific colors can be displayed from a given “Color Space” (Rec.709, Rec.2020, DCI-P3) (i.e. the color range).

     

    Dynamic Range (SDR, HDR) determines the luminosity range of a specific color – from its darkest shade (or tone) to its brightest.

     

    The overall brightness range of a color will be determined by a display’s “contrast ratio”, that is, the ratio of luminance between the darkest black that can be produced and the brightest white.

     

    Color Volume is the “Color Gamut” + the “Dynamic/Luminosity Range”.
    A TV’s Color Volume will not only determine which specific colors can be displayed (the color range) but also that color’s luminosity range, which will have an affect on its “brightness”, and “colorfulness” (intensity and saturation).

     

    The better the colour volume in a TV, the closer to life the colours appear.

     

    QLED TV can express nearly all of the colours in the DCI-P3 colour space, and of those colours, express 100% of the colour volume, thereby producing an incredible range of colours.

     

    With OLED TV, when the image is too bright, the percentage of the colours in the colour volume produced by the TV drops significantly. The colours get washed out and can only express around 70% colour volume, making the picture quality drop too.

     

    Note. OLED TV uses organic material, so it may lose colour expression as it ages.

     

    Resources for more reading and comparison below

    www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lcd-flat-panel-displays/2812161-what-color-volume.html

     

    www.newtechnologytv.com/qled-vs-oled/

     

    news.samsung.com/za/qled-tv-vs-oled-tv

     

    www.cnet.com/news/qled-vs-oled-samsungs-tv-tech-and-lgs-tv-tech-are-not-the-same/

     

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  • A Brief History of Color in Art

    pIXELsHAM.com

    www.artsy.net/article/the-art-genome-project-a-brief-history-of-color-in-art

    Of all the pigments that have been banned over the centuries, the color most missed by painters is likely Lead White.

    This hue could capture and reflect a gleam of light like no other, though its production was anything but glamorous. The 17th-century Dutch method for manufacturing the pigment involved layering cow and horse manure over lead and vinegar. After three months in a sealed room, these materials would combine to create flakes of pure white. While scientists in the late 19th century identified lead as poisonous, it wasn’t until 1978 that the United States banned the production of lead white paint.

    More reading:
    www.canva.com/learn/color-meanings/

    https://www.infogrades.com/history-events-infographics/bizarre-history-of-colors/

    Views : 2,631
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  • HDR and Color

    pIXELsHAM.com

    https://www.soundandvision.com/content/nits-and-bits-hdr-and-color

    In HD we often refer to the range of available colors as a color gamut. Such a color gamut is typically plotted on a two-dimensional diagram, called a CIE chart, as shown in at the top of this blog. Each color is characterized by its x/y coordinates.

    Good enough for government work, perhaps. But for HDR, with its higher luminance levels and wider color, the gamut becomes three-dimensional.

    For HDR the color gamut therefore becomes a characteristic we now call the color volume. It isn’t easy to show color volume on a two-dimensional medium like the printed page or a computer screen, but one method is shown below. As the luminance becomes higher, the picture eventually turns to white. As it becomes darker, it fades to black. The traditional color gamut shown on the CIE chart is simply a slice through this color volume at a selected luminance level, such as 50%.

    Three different color volumes—we still refer to them as color gamuts though their third dimension is important—are currently the most significant. The first is BT.709 (sometimes referred to as Rec.709), the color gamut used for pre-UHD/HDR formats, including standard HD.

    The largest is known as BT.2020; it encompasses (roughly) the range of colors visible to the human eye (though ET might find it insufficient!).

    Between these two is the color gamut used in digital cinema, known as DCI-P3.

    sRGB

    D65

     

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  • Color perspective – artists vs normal people

    pIXELsHAM.com

    Views : 2,666
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  • About green screens

    pIXELsHAM.com

    hackaday.com/2015/02/07/how-green-screen-worked-before-computers/

     

    www.newtek.com/blog/tips/best-green-screen-materials/

     

    www.chromawall.com/blog//chroma-key-green

     

     

    Chroma Key Green, the color of green screens is also known as Chroma Green and is valued at approximately 354C in the Pantone color matching system (PMS).

     

    Chroma Green can be broken down in many different ways. Here is green screen green as other values useful for both physical and digital production:

     

    Green Screen as RGB Color Value: 0, 177, 64
    Green Screen as CMYK Color Value: 81, 0, 92, 0
    Green Screen as Hex Color Value: #00b140
    Green Screen as Websafe Color Value: #009933

     

    Chroma Key Green is reasonably close to an 18% gray reflectance.

     

    Illuminate your green screen with an uniform source with less than 2/3 EV variation.
    The level of brightness at any given f-stop should be equivalent to a 90% white card under the same lighting.

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  • UV maps

    pIXELsHAM.com

    https://byvalle.com/UVchecker/

    All maps in the post

    (more…)

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  • Photography basics: Why Use a (MacBeth) Color Chart?

    pIXELsHAM.com

    Start here: https://www.pixelsham.com/2013/05/09/gretagmacbeth-color-checker-numeric-values/

     

    https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-color-checker-tool/

     

     

     

     

    In LightRoom

     

    in Final Cut

     

    in Nuke

    Note: In Foundry’s Nuke, the software will map 18% gray to whatever your center f/stop is set to in the viewer settings (f/8 by default… change that to EV by following the instructions below).
    You can experiment with this by attaching an Exposure node to a Constant set to 0.18, setting your viewer read-out to Spotmeter, and adjusting the stops in the node up and down. You will see that a full stop up or down will give you the respective next value on the aperture scale (f8, f11, f16 etc.).

    One stop doubles or halves the amount or light that hits the filmback/ccd, so everything works in powers of 2.
    So starting with 0.18 in your constant, you will see that raising it by a stop will give you .36 as a floating point number (in linear space), while your f/stop will be f/11 and so on.

     

    If you set your center stop to 0 (see below) you will get a relative readout in EVs, where EV 0 again equals 18% constant gray.

     

    In other words. Setting the center f-stop to 0 means that in a neutral plate, the middle gray in the macbeth chart will equal to exposure value 0. EV 0 corresponds to an exposure time of 1 sec and an aperture of f/1.0.

     

    This will set the sun usually around EV12-17 and the sky EV1-4 , depending on cloud coverage.

     

    To switch Foundry’s Nuke’s SpotMeter to return the EV of an image, click on the main viewport, and then press s, this opens the viewer’s properties. Now set the center f-stop to 0 in there. And the SpotMeter in the viewport will change from aperture and fstops to EV.

    Views : 1,817
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  • How Technicolor changed movies

    pIXELsHAM.com

    Views : 1,077
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  • 3D Printing in Multi-Color with the Mosaic Palette+ on my Prusa MK3

    pIXELsHAM.com

    Views : 1,118
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  • Glossary of Lighting Terms – cheat sheet

    pIXELsHAM.com

    http://lowel.tiffen.com/edu/glossary/

     

    https://www.filmsite.org/filmterms.html

     

    https://slideplayer.com/slide/4683339/

     

    Views : 2,903
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  • Composition – cinematography Cheat Sheet

    pIXELsHAM.com

    https://moodle.gllm.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/190622/mod_resource/content/1/Cinematography%20Cheat%20Sheet.pdf

    Where is our eye attracted first? Why?

    Size. Focus. Lighting. Color.

    Size. Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) on the right.
    Focus. He’s one of the two objects in focus.
    Lighting. Mr. White is large and in focus and Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) is highlighted by
    a shaft of light.
    Color. Both are black and white but the read on Mr. White’s shirt now really stands out.


    What type of lighting?

    -> High key lighting.
    Features bright, even illumination and few conspicuous shadows. This lighting key is often used in musicals and comedies.

    Low key lighting
    Features diffused shadows and atmospheric pools of light. This lighting key is often used in mysteries and thrillers.

    High contrast lighting
    Features harsh shafts of lights and dramatic streaks of blackness. This type of lighting is often used in tragedies and melodramas.

     

    What type of shot?

    Extreme long shot
    Taken from a great distance, showing much of the locale. Ifpeople are included in these shots, they usually appear as mere specks

    -> Long shot
    Corresponds to the space between the audience and the stage in a live theater. The long shots show the characters and some of the locale.

    Full shot
    Range with just enough space to contain the human body in full. The full shot shows the character and a minimal amount of the locale.

    Medium shot
    Shows the human figure from the knees or waist up.

    Close-Up
    Concentrates on a relatively small object and show very little if any locale.

    Extreme close-up
    Focuses on an unnaturally small portion of an object, giving that part great detail and symbolic significance.

     

    What angle?

    Bird’s-eye view.
    The shot is photographed directly from above. This type of shot can be disorienting, and the people photographed seem insignificant.

    High angle.
    This angle reduces the size of the objects photographed. A person photographed from this angle seems harmless and insignificant, but to a lesser extent than with the bird’s-eye view.

    -> Eye-level shot.
    The clearest view of an object, but seldom intrinsically dramatic, because it tends to be the norm.

    Low angle.
    This angle increases high and a sense of verticality, heightening the importance of the object photographed. A person shot from this angle is given a sense of power and respect.

    Oblique angle.
    For this angle, the camera is tilted laterally, giving the image a slanted appearance. Oblique angles suggest tension, transition, a impending movement. They are also called canted or dutch angles.

     

    What is the dominant color?

    The use of color in this shot is symbolic. The scene is set in warehouse. Both the set and characters are blues, blacks and whites.

    This was intentional allowing for the scenes and shots with blood to have a great level of contrast.

     

    What is the Lens/Filter/Stock?

    Telephoto lens.
    A lens that draws objects closer but also diminishes the illusion of depth.

    Wide-angle lens.
    A lens that takes in a broad area and increases the illusion of depth but sometimes distorts the edges of the image.

    Fast film stock.
    Highly sensitive to light, it can register an image with little illumination. However, the final product tends to be grainy.

    Slow film stock.
    Relatively insensitive to light, it requires a great deal of illumination. The final product tends to look polished.

    The lens is not wide-angle because there isn’t a great sense of depth, nor are several planes in focus. The lens is probably long but not necessarily a telephoto lens because the depth isn’t inordinately compressed.

    The stock is fast because of the grainy quality of the image.

     

    Subsidiary Contrast; where does the eye go next?

    The two guns.

     

    How much visual information is packed into the image? Is the texture stark, moderate, or highly detailed?

    Minimalist clutter in the warehouse allows a focus on a character driven thriller.

     

    What is the Composition?

    Horizontal.
    Compositions based on horizontal lines seem visually at rest and suggest placidity or peacefulness.

    Vertical.
    Compositions based on vertical lines seem visually at rest and suggest strength.

    -> Diagonal.
    Compositions based on diagonal, or oblique, lines seem dynamic and suggest tension or anxiety.

    -> Binary. Binary structures emphasize parallelism.

    Triangle.
    Triadic compositions stress the dynamic interplay among three main

    Circle.
    Circular compositions suggest security and enclosure.

     

    Is the form open or closed? Does the image suggest a window that arbitrarily isolates a fragment of the scene? Or a proscenium arch, in which the visual elements are carefully arranged and held in balance?

    The most nebulous of all the categories of mise en scene, the type of form is determined by how consciously structured the mise en scene is. Open forms stress apparently simple techniques, because with these unself-conscious methods the filmmaker is able to emphasize the immediate, the familiar, the intimate aspects of reality. In open-form images, the frame tends to be deemphasized. In closed form images, all the necessary information is carefully structured within the confines of the frame. Space seems enclosed and self-contained rather than continuous.

    Could argue this is a proscenium arch because this is such a classic shot with parallels and juxtapositions.

     

    Is the framing tight or loose? Do the character have no room to move around, or can they move freely without impediments?

    Shots where the characters are placed at the edges of the frame and have little room to move around within the frame are considered tight.

    Longer shots, in which characters have room to move around within the frame, are considered loose and tend to suggest freedom.

    Center-framed giving us the entire scene showing isolation, place and struggle.

     

    Depth of Field. On how many planes is the image composed (how many are in focus)? Does the background or foreground comment in any way on the mid-ground?

    Standard DOF, one background and clearly defined foreground.

     

    Which way do the characters look vis-a-vis the camera?

    An actor can be photographed in any of five basic positions, each conveying different psychological overtones.

    Full-front (facing the camera):
    the position with the most intimacy. The character is looking in our direction, inviting our complicity.

    Quarter Turn:
    the favored position of most filmmakers. This position offers a high degree of intimacy but with less emotional involvement than the full-front.

    -> Profile (looking of the frame left or right):
    More remote than the quarter turn, the character in profile seems unaware of being observed, lost in his or her own thoughts.

    Three-quarter Turn:
    More anonymous than the profile, this position is useful for conveying a character’s unfriendly or antisocial feelings, for in effect, the character is partially turning his or her back on us, rejecting our interest.

    Back to Camera:
    The most anonymous of all positions, this position is often used to suggest a character’s alienation from the world. When a character has his or her back to the camera, we can only guess what’s taking place internally, conveying a sense of concealment, or mystery.

    How much space is there between the characters?

    Extremely close, for a gunfight.

     

    The way people use space can be divided into four proxemic patterns.

    Intimate distances.
    The intimate distance ranges from skin contact to about eighteen inches away. This is the distance of physical involvement–of love, comfort, and tenderness between individuals.

    -> Personal distances.
    The personal distance ranges roughly from eighteen inches away to about four feet away. These distances tend to be reserved for friends and acquaintances. Personal distances preserve the privacy between individuals, yet these rages don’t necessarily suggest exclusion, as intimate distances often do.

    Social distances.
    The social distance rages from four feet to about twelve feet. These distances are usually reserved for impersonal business and casual social gatherings. It’s a friendly range in most cases, yet somewhat more formal than the personal distance.

    Public distances.
    The public distance extends from twelve feet to twenty-five feet or more. This range tends to be formal and rather detached.

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  • Gamma correction

    pIXELsHAM.com

    http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html#Gammabox

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction

     

    http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Gamma.htm

     

    https://www.w3.org/Graphics/Color/sRGB.html

     

    http://www.eizoglobal.com/library/basics/lcd_display_gamma/index.html

     

    https://forum.reallusion.com/PrintTopic308094.aspx

     

    Basically, gamma is the relationship between the brightness of a pixel as it appears on the screen, and the numerical value of that pixel. Generally Gamma is just about defining relationships.

    Three main types:
    – Image Gamma encoded in images
    – Display Gammas encoded in hardware and/or viewing time
    – System or Viewing Gamma which is the net effect of all gammas when you look back at a final image. In theory this should flatten back to 1.0 gamma.

     

    Our eyes, different camera or video recorder devices do not correctly capture luminance. (they are not linear)
    Different display devices (monitor, phone screen, TV) do not display luminance correctly neither. So, one needs to correct them, therefore the gamma correction function.

    The human perception of brightness, under common illumination conditions (not pitch black nor blindingly bright), follows an approximate power function (note: no relation to the gamma function), with greater sensitivity to relative differences between darker tones than between lighter ones, consistent with the Stevens’ power law for brightness perception. If images are not gamma-encoded, they allocate too many bits or too much bandwidth to highlights that humans cannot differentiate, and too few bits or too little bandwidth to shadow values that humans are sensitive to and would require more bits/bandwidth to maintain the same visual quality.

    https://blog.amerlux.com/4-things-architects-should-know-about-lumens-vs-perceived-brightness/

    cones manage color receptivity, rods determine how large our pupils should be. The larger (more dilated) our pupils are, the more light enters our eyes. In dark situations, our rods dilate our pupils so we can see better. This impacts how we perceive brightness.

     

    https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/gamma-correction.htm

    A gamma encoded image has to have “gamma correction” applied when it is viewed — which effectively converts it back into light from the original scene. In other words, the purpose of gamma encoding is for recording the image — not for displaying the image. Fortunately this second step (the “display gamma”) is automatically performed by your monitor and video card. The following diagram illustrates how all of this fits together:

     

    Display gamma
    The display gamma can be a little confusing because this term is often used interchangeably with gamma correction, since it corrects for the file gamma. This is the gamma that you are controlling when you perform monitor calibration and adjust your contrast setting. Fortunately, the industry has converged on a standard display gamma of 2.2, so one doesn’t need to worry about the pros/cons of different values.

     

    Gamma encoding of images is used to optimize the usage of bits when encoding an image, or bandwidth used to transport an image, by taking advantage of the non-linear manner in which humans perceive light and color. Human response to luminance is also biased. Especially sensible to dark areas.
    Thus, the human visual system has a non-linear response to the power of the incoming light, so a fixed increase in power will not have a fixed increase in perceived brightness.
    We perceive a value as half bright when it is actually 18% of the original intensity not 50%. As such, our perception is not linear.

     

    You probably already know that a pixel can have any ‘value’ of Red, Green, and Blue between 0 and 255, and you would therefore think that a pixel value of 127 would appear as half of the maximum possible brightness, and that a value of 64 would represent one-quarter brightness, and so on. Well, that’s just not the case.

     

    Pixar Color Management
    https://renderman.pixar.com/color-management


    – Why do we need linear gamma?
    Because light works linearly and therefore only works properly when it lights linear values.

     

    – Why do we need to view in sRGB?
    Because the resulting linear image in not suitable for viewing, but contains all the proper data. Pixar’s IT viewer can compensate by showing the rendered image through a sRGB look up table (LUT), which is identical to what will be the final image after the sRGB gamma curve is applied in post.

    This would be simple enough if every software would play by the same rules, but they don’t. In fact, the default gamma workflow for many 3D software is incorrect. This is where the knowledge of a proper imaging workflow comes in to save the day.

     

    Cathode-ray tubes have a peculiar relationship between the voltage applied to them, and the amount of light emitted. It isn’t linear, and in fact it follows what’s called by mathematicians and other geeks, a ‘power law’ (a number raised to a power). The numerical value of that power is what we call the gamma of the monitor or system.

     

    Thus. Gamma describes the nonlinear relationship between the pixel levels in your computer and the luminance of your monitor (the light energy it emits) or the reflectance of your prints. The equation is,

    Luminance = C * value^gamma + black level

    – C is set by the monitor Contrast control.

    – Value is the pixel level normalized to a maximum of 1. For an 8 bit monitor with pixel levels 0 – 255, value = (pixel level)/255.

     

    – Black level is set by the (misnamed) monitor Brightness control. The relationship is linear if gamma = 1. The chart illustrates the relationship for gamma = 1, 1.5, 1.8 and 2.2 with C = 1 and black level = 0.

     

    Gamma affects middle tones; it has no effect on black or white. If gamma is set too high, middle tones appear too dark. Conversely, if it’s set too low, middle tones appear too light.

     

    The native gamma of monitors – the relationship between grid voltage and luminance – is typically around 2.5, though it can vary considerably. This is well above any of the display standards, so you must be aware of gamma and correct it.

     

    A display gamma of 2.2 is the de facto standard for the Windows operating system and the Internet-standard sRGB color space.

     

    The old standard for Mcintosh and prepress file interchange is 1.8. It is now 2.2 as well.

     

    Video cameras have gammas of approximately 0.45 – the inverse of 2.2. The viewing or system gamma is the product of the gammas of all the devices in the system – the image acquisition device (film+scanner or digital camera), color lookup table (LUT), and monitor. System gamma is typically between 1.1 and 1.5. Viewing flare and other factor make images look flat at system gamma = 1.0.

     

    Most laptop LCD screens are poorly suited for critical image editing because gamma is extremely sensitive to viewing angle.

     

    More about screens

    https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/gamma-correction.htm

    CRT Monitors. Due to an odd bit of engineering luck, the native gamma of a CRT is 2.5 — almost the inverse of our eyes. Values from a gamma-encoded file could therefore be sent straight to the screen and they would automatically be corrected and appear nearly OK. However, a small gamma correction of ~1/1.1 needs to be applied to achieve an overall display gamma of 2.2. This is usually already set by the manufacturer’s default settings, but can also be set during monitor calibration.

    LCD Monitors. LCD monitors weren’t so fortunate; ensuring an overall display gamma of 2.2 often requires substantial corrections, and they are also much less consistent than CRT’s. LCDs therefore require something called a look-up table (LUT) in order to ensure that input values are depicted using the intended display gamma (amongst other things). See the tutorial on monitor calibration: look-up tables for more on this topic.

    About black level (brightness). Your monitor’s brightness control (which should actually be called black level) can be adjusted using the mostly black pattern on the right side of the chart. This pattern contains two dark gray vertical bars, A and B, which increase in luminance with increasing gamma. (If you can’t see them, your black level is way low.) The left bar (A) should be just above the threshold of visibility opposite your chosen gamma (2.2 or 1.8) – it should be invisible where gamma is lower by about 0.3. The right bar (B) should be distinctly visible: brighter than (A), but still very dark. This chart is only for monitors; it doesn’t work on printed media.

     

    The 1.8 and 2.2 gray patterns at the bottom of the image represent a test of monitor quality and calibration. If your monitor is functioning properly and calibrated to gamma = 2.2 or 1.8, the corresponding pattern will appear smooth neutral gray when viewed from a distance. Any waviness, irregularity, or color banding indicates incorrect monitor calibration or poor performance.

     

    Another test to see whether one’s computer monitor is properly hardware adjusted and can display shadow detail in sRGB images properly, they should see the left half of the circle in the large black square very faintly but the right half should be clearly visible. If not, one can adjust their monitor’s contrast and/or brightness setting. This alters the monitor’s perceived gamma. The image is best viewed against a black background.

     

    This procedure is not suitable for calibrating or print-proofing a monitor. It can be useful for making a monitor display sRGB images approximately correctly, on systems in which profiles are not used (for example, the Firefox browser prior to version 3.0 and many others) or in systems that assume untagged source images are in the sRGB colorspace.

     

    On some operating systems running the X Window System, one can set the gamma correction factor (applied to the existing gamma value) by issuing the command xgamma -gamma 0.9 for setting gamma correction factor to 0.9, and xgamma for querying current value of that factor (the default is 1.0). In OS X systems, the gamma and other related screen calibrations are made through the System Preference

     

    https://www.kinematicsoup.com/news/2016/6/15/gamma-and-linear-space-what-they-are-how-they-differ

    Linear color space means that numerical intensity values correspond proportionally to their perceived intensity. This means that the colors can be added and multiplied correctly. A color space without that property is called ”non-linear”. Below is an example where an intensity value is doubled in a linear and a non-linear color space. While the corresponding numerical values in linear space are correct, in the non-linear space (gamma = 0.45, more on this later) we can’t simply double the value to get the correct intensity.

     

    The need for gamma arises for two main reasons: The first is that screens have been built with a non-linear response to intensity. The other is that the human eye can tell the difference between darker shades better than lighter shades. This means that when images are compressed to save space, we want to have greater accuracy for dark intensities at the expense of lighter intensities. Both of these problems are resolved using gamma correction, which is to say the intensity of every pixel in an image is put through a power function. Specifically, gamma is the name given to the power applied to the image.

     

    CRT screens, simply by how they work, apply a gamma of around 2.2, and modern LCD screens are designed to mimic that behavior. A gamma of 2.2, the reciprocal of 0.45, when applied to the brightened images will darken them, leaving the original image.

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  • 3D Lighting Tutorial by Amaan Kram

    pIXELsHAM.com

    http://www.amaanakram.com/lightingT/part1.htm

    The goals of lighting in 3D computer graphics are more or less the same as those of real world lighting.

     

    Lighting serves a basic function of bringing out, or pushing back the shapes of objects visible from the camera’s view.
    It gives a two-dimensional image on the monitor an illusion of the third dimension-depth.

    But it does not just stop there. It gives an image its personality, its character. A scene lit in different ways can give a feeling of happiness, of sorrow, of fear etc., and it can do so in dramatic or subtle ways. Along with personality and character, lighting fills a scene with emotion that is directly transmitted to the viewer.

     

    Trying to simulate a real environment in an artificial one can be a daunting task. But even if you make your 3D rendering look absolutely photo-realistic, it doesn’t guarantee that the image carries enough emotion to elicit a “wow” from the people viewing it.

     

    Making 3D renderings photo-realistic can be hard. Putting deep emotions in them can be even harder. However, if you plan out your lighting strategy for the mood and emotion that you want your rendering to express, you make the process easier for yourself.

     

    Each light source can be broken down in to 4 distinct components and analyzed accordingly.

    · Intensity
    · Direction
    · Color
    · Size

     

    The overall thrust of this writing is to produce photo-realistic images by applying good lighting techniques.

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  • Pixel Cinematography – A Lighting Approach for Computer Graphics – Siggraph 1996

    pIXELsHAM.com

    http://media.siggraph.org/education/cgsource/Archive/ConfereceCourses/S96/course30.pdf

    Views : 1,728
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  • Pattern generators

    pIXELsHAM.com

    http://qrohlf.com/trianglify-generator/

     

    https://halftonepro.com/app/polygons#

     

    http://color-wander.surge.sh/

     

    https://mattdesl.svbtle.com/generative-art-with-nodejs-and-canvas

     

    https://www.patterncooler.com/

     

    http://permadi.com/java/spaint/spaint.html

     

    https://dribbble.com/shots/1847313-Kaleidoscope-Generator-PSD

     

    http://www.patternify.com/

     

    http://eskimoblood.github.io/gerstnerizer/

     

    http://www.stripegenerator.com/

     

    http://btmills.github.io/geopattern/geopattern.html

     

    http://fractalarchitect.net/FA4-Random-Generator.html

     

    https://sciencevsmagic.net/fractal/#0605,0000,3,2,0,1,2

     

    https://sites.google.com/site/mandelbulber/home

     

    (more…)

    Views : 1,438
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  • Colors around the world

    pIXELsHAM.com

    Views : 1,210
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  • Web vs Printing or digital RGB vs CMYK

    pIXELsHAM.com

     

    Views : 2,807
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  • Color theory in marketing

    pIXELsHAM.com

    Views : 1,466
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  • Full Color 3D Printing Comes to the Desktop with the DaVinci Color

    pIXELsHAM.com

    http://makezine.com/2017/09/01/full-color-3d-printing-comes-desktop-davinci-color/

    Views : 1,123
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