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Books 81 intricacies entailed in providing the “manufactured” colour that enlivens business and leisure can be nothing but beneficial’ is one of the author’s stated aims. He succeeds admirably in explaining these intricacies. His broader intention to offer a comprehensive explanation of the principles of color is less successful. It is emphasized that this is an introductory text for nonscientists, so perhaps I am overcritical. Several early chapters define terms and introduce concepts from both physics and sciences of vision; color mixing processes and measurement are carefully detailed in the middle sections and reproduction methods conclude the material offered. The latter two-thirds are very clearly explained, the approach aided by diagrams and pictures. The author’s field of expertise and his experience in teaching color reproduction-related technology brings welcome richness of detail within understandable contexts. Having struggled for years to explain to nonscientists the CIE (Commission Internationale d’Eclairage) system, I am now glad to have a source that does it so well. The problem is solved. Many details of colorimetry by several techniques are patiently discussed and the treatment is taken to a point where calculation of careful specifications is explained. The comprehensiveness devoted to color reproduction, both additive and subtractive, leaves nothing that the layman needs without extensive consideration. If you have wondered about color in either television, photography or printing, here is the first place to turn for answers. The general approach that color is a visual phenomenon is both correct and surprising in a text devoted more to stimulus measurement and production. This approach is strengthened by the early discussion of contrast, which is carried with good effect into the later sections. The source and necessity for preserving this contrast while absolute values are lost is not well discussed. Current hypotheses that ascribe various code techniques to retinal signals to preserve useful color information have not been considered, so the revival of Ewald Hering’s work as currently extended by Jameson, Hurvich and Boynton, among many others, is not reflected in the discussion of vision. This leads to many disappointing errors in the early chapters. For example, the retina is part of the brain, lateral inhibition in the retina accounts for several contrast effects (erroneously attributed to scattering and fatigue); the rods can be part of the color selective system; the iris plays a very small part in illumination adaptation (he says only one order of magnitude adjustment, whereas the visual sensitivity range is in excess of seven orders!) and certainly even Newton did not mistake color as ‘visual sensations produced by light of particular wavelengths’ (p. 7). It is disappointing to have a weak argument for why we see yellow uniquely different from red and green when the fact is that no one has a convincing hypothesis and it is one more aspect of visual perception that remains a mystery. As a comprehensive introductory text on color the book comes close to being one, in that its later chapters are very strong indeed. But the field of color science has grown, especially in the last 10 years, so that the many perceptual aspects require special treatments of their own. Even the more comprehensive The Science of Color (1953) is dated now, as is Color: A Guide to Basic Facts and Concepts by R. W. Burnham et al. (1963) (both strangely missing from the bibliography). Many will find the early parts of the book slow reading. Some sentences lack clarity because of the overcrowding of facts and qualifications. In the later technical chapters both ease of reading and clarity do take over. But let my mixed impressions be superseded by one of the author’s many beautiful statements: ‘All our estimations of colour are relative, formed in association with memory and the actual light which falls upon the eye, and there are occasions when more subtle factors seem to be at work. The eye is beautifully constructed, despite its optical errors, and the transformation processing of the physical input, the light that enters our eyes, by the visual system and the brain remains a matter of wonder as well as a complex subject for investigation.’ Discover Acrylics with Frank Covino: An Academic Approach...

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