HOME |
RSS | 
Don't
even bother making reddish green or yellowish blue colors. Your eyes simply
can't see them:
Red-green and yellow-blue are the so-called "forbidden colors." Composed of pairs of hues whose light frequencies automatically cancel each other out in the human eye, they're supposed to be impossible to see simultaneously.
The limitation results from the way we perceive color in the first place. Cells in the retina called "opponent neurons" fire when stimulated by incoming red light, and this flurry of activity tells the brain we're looking at something red. Those same opponent neurons are inhibited by green light, and the absence of activity tells the brain we're seeing green. Similarly, yellow light excites another set of opponent neurons, but blue light damps them. While most colors induce a mixture of effects in both sets of neurons, which our brains can decode to identify the component parts, red light exactly cancels the effect of green light (and yellow exactly cancels blue), so we can never perceive those colors coming from the same place.
Link | Impossible Colors at Wikipedia
If you browse reddit, you may have noticed that when someone posts a very old picture of a relative, someone always restores and colorizes it as a gift to the submitter. A lot of these amazing photo restorations are done by Swedish artist Sanna Dullaway. She has also colorized many historic photographs.
Dullaway recently started her own business in restoring old photographs, but the website is still under construction. But there are other places to see her work. Link to reddit album. Link to Dullaway’s Flickr stream. -Thanks, özi!
(Images credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Love colors? Then staying at a boring ol' hotel simply won't do! Thank goodness Pantone came to the rescue!
Behold, the Pantone Hotel, a seven-story, 59-room hotel in Brussels by architect Olivier Hannaert and interior designer Michel Penneman. The colorful hotel utilizes a lot of colors from those color chips designers love so much.
Link - via dwell
I saw pictures of this place last year and could not find enough information about it to share, so I am delighted to find this article. A neighborhood found in Taichung City in Taiwan, a military dependents village founded over 50 years ago, is one of the most colorful places in the world, thanks to 86-year-old artist Huang Yung-fu.
Huang Yung-fu first picked up a paintbrush about two years ago. He started to paint for his own pleasure using the remains of the equipment from the art classes he attended when he was a child. Students of a university not far from the “painted military dependents’ village” seem to be among the first who discovered this old man’s talent and started to spread the news. Some even took pictures of the paintings and published them online. Information about his paintings went viral, to the point where tourists have flown in from Malaysia, Japan, and Korea to see them. The dull and drab military dependents’ village is now recognized as one of the must-see spots in central Taichung City.
See more pictures at Amusing Planet. Link -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Flickr user Steve Barringer)
Grocery stores always manage to have a table full of bananas just the perfect shade of yellow to attract customers, that will last a couple more days while the family eats them. They are shipped in by the boatload from Central America, so how do they manage this feat? You can get the lowdown from a banana distributor who explains the precisely controlled process that produces the produce we buy. Link -via Jason Kottke
The following article is from the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
(Image credit: Flickr user Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier)
by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff
The year 1931 stands out in the history of research about insane people’s favorite colors. That summer, Siegfried E. Katz of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital published a study called “Color Preference in the Insane.” The full citation is:
“Color Preference in the Insane,” Siegfried E. Katz, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 26, no. 2, July 1931, pp. 203–11.
Assisted by a Dr. Cheney, Dr. Katz tested 134 hospitalized mental patients. For simplicity’s sake, he limited the testing to six colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. No black. No white. No shades of gray.
“These colors,” he wrote, “rectangular in shape, one and one-half inches square, cut from Bradley colored papers were pasted in two rows on a gray cardboard. They were three inches apart. The colors were numbered haphazardly and the number of each color placed above it. The cardboard was presented to the patient and he was asked to place his finger on the number of the color he liked best. After he had made the choice he was asked in a similar manner for the next best color, and so on.”
Some of the patients “cooperated well”, and made six choices. Others, Dr. Katz reported, “quickly lost interest and made only one, two or three.”
Blue was the most popular color. Men, in the aggregate, then favored green, but the female patients were divided on green, red or violet as a second choice.
Patients who had resided in the hospital for three or more years were slightly less emphatic about blue. Dr. Katz says that these long-term guests were “those with most marked mental deterioration.” Their preference, as a group, shifted somewhat toward green and yellow. Those of longest tenure, though few in number, had a slightly elevated liking for orange.
The report is packed with tidbits that beg, even now, for further analysis:
==> “38 per cent of dementia praecox and manic-depressives, each, gave first preference to blue, and 42 per cent of all other patients.”
==> “Green received the first choice from 16 per cent of dementia praecox, 9 per cent of manic-depressives, and 13 per cent of other diseases.”
==> “For red as first choice, the percentage of votes were: Manic-depressives, 16; other diseases, 15; dementia praecox, 12. As second choice, they were: Manic-depressives, 22; dementia praecox, 18; other diseases, 13.”
==> “Orange and yellow were also best liked by manic-depressives; green by dementia praecox; and violet by all others.”
Dr. Katz foresaw practical applications for his research. He suggested that “in the furnishings of living quarters the selection of colors pleasing to special groups of patients might be worth consideration.”
Consciously or not, hospital staff seem to have followed Dr. Katz’s insights in fashioning their personal at-work appearance. The evocatively-named Bragard Medical Uniforms, a New York firm founded in 1933, now publishes a list of the most popular uniform colors. The list currently is topped by, in order: royal blue; dark grey (which, alas, Dr Katz excluded from his 1931 survey); dark green; and red.
Dr. Katz’s findings were put to the test, partially, decades later in the study:
“The Relationship Between Color Preference and Psychiatric Disorders,” Cooper B. Holmes, H. Edward Fouty, Philip J. Wurtz and Bruce M. Burdick, Journal of Clinical Psychology, vol. 41, no. 6, November 1985, pp. 746–9.
The authors, at Emporia State University and at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, explain, at the end of their study:
We realize that the reader may question whether the present study merely has added to the confusion about color preferences and personality and color preferences and psychiatric illness. We think not. Enough studies have been reported to present a consistently inconsistent picture of the relationship. That is, it is apparent that a clear-cut relationship between color and psychiatric illness has not been established, and our study continues to show that pattern. This brings into question the use of color in psychiatric diagnosis.
_____________________
This article is republished with permission from the July-August 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
Juan-Diego was inspired by colors to write a song. The result is both cute and funny. Who knew a guy getting hit with a pie had so many colors? -Thanks, Juan!
Comments Off
Heterochromia means eyes that come in two different colors. Complete heterochromia means the color of the left eye is completely different from the color of the right eye. In cats, this most often occurs in white cats or cats that have the white-spotted gene, but can occur in any color of cat. See a collection of beautiful odd-eyed cats at Environmental Graffiti. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user P!XELTREE)
It’s Spidey red versus Superman blue in this infographic that shows the ways in which the two comic juggernauts use color to tell their tales. Be sure to read on and find out all about the importance of colors in comics, and how when some heroes change color it really alters their mood.
Who knew lizards came in so many different colors? While most animals are happy to take on the colors of their environment for camouflage purposes, different species of lizards dress in colors designed to stand out from the crowd during mating season. Luckily, photographers see them as well. See 20 different colorful lizards posing for their pictures at Environmental Graffiti. Link
(Image credit: Ester Inbar)
Comments Off 
Carl and Ellie’s dream house from the movie Up! comes to life in Herriman, Utah, with Disney’s blessing. At Lovely Listing, you can also see a bit of the inside, too. Link
Comments Off 
Remember mood rings? They were fun for a while, but kind of useless. Now the same kind of technology has an important purpose. In research sponsored by the government of Australia, a team of scientists have developed fabric that monitors temperature and shows it by changing color. Bandages made from this fabric can relay information about the healing process underneath.
Their invention could reduce the $500 million cost of chronic wound care in Australia.
“We hope that the dressing could lead to more rapid and effective treatment of chronic wounds such as leg ulcers, saving time and money, as well as improving patient well-being,” says the lead inventor Louise van der Werff, a CSIRO materials scientist and Monash University PhD student.“We’ve created a fabric that changes colour in response to temperature – showing changes of less than 0.5 of a degree. We expect that, when incorporated into a bandage it will allow nurses to quickly identify healing problems such as infection or interruptions to the blood supply, which are typically accompanied by a local increase or decrease in temperature,” she says.
A bandage manufacturer is working with the team, and expects the product to be in the testing stage in about six months. Link -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Louise van der Werff, CSIRO)
Comments Off 
Recently a couple decided to raise their child non gender specific and let their baby decide for his or herself what toys, clothes and colors they preferred. This study shows how men and women differ on color preferences. So this begs the question, are our color preferences influenced by our gender?
From the day that babies are brought home and cradled in their pink or blue blankets, implications have been made about gender and color. While there are no concrete rules about what colors are exclusively feminine or masculine, there have been studies conducted over the past seven decades that draw some generalizations.
This short video is thought to be the last footage of comedians Laurel and Hardy; it was shot in 1956 at the home of Stan Laurel’s daughter, Lois. Also featured in the clip: Stan Laurel’s wife Ida Kitaeva Raphael Laurel, Hardy’s wife Virginia Lucille Jones, Andy Wade (who shot the film), Laurel’s daughter Lois, her husband Rand Brooks and their children, Randy and Laurie.
This web clock from designer Jack Hughes displays the time like all web clocks, but it also changes the background to correspond to the hexadecimal color value represented by the numbers of the digital time. Watch for any length of time and it will change, although sometimes quite gradually. However, when I looked up #110927, I got a completely different color. The colors may be set for a specific time zone. Link -via J-Walk Blog
A Dutch art duo by the name of Mr. Beam created a white room to project colors, patterns, and textures upon. Two projectors produce the changes in the walls, carpet, and furniture. Link -via reddit
Kim Neill is a designer and illustrator has plenty of pantone color chips laying around, which made it easier for her to create cookies in exact pantone colors. She mixed royal icing until the colors were right, and added the color names with an edible marker once the icing was set. Instructions are included in the post. Link -via J-Walk Blog
Photo: Queinteresante – via Craftzine
Etsy seller Queinteresante combines chemistry and art by creating clear labels of the names of chemicals that make the colors of crayons. Perfect for writing poetry:
Roses are Ruby Al2O3:Cr
Violets are Vanadyl VO2+(aq)
First, watch the video. Then come back and read the rest of this description. J.W. Suchow and G.A. Alvarez studied how motion affected awareness of color change in their research on change blindness. Try it yourself!
Keep your eyes fixed on the small white mark in the center. At first, the ring is stationary and it’s easy to tell that the dots are changing. A few seconds later, the ring begins to rotate and the dots suddenly appear to stop changing.
But play the movie again, this time looking directly at one of the dots and following it as the ring rotates. You will see that, in fact, the dots had been changing the whole time, even during the rotation—you just didn’t notice it. This failure to detect that moving objects are changing is silencing.
The findings were published in the journal Current Biology, with an abstract available online. Link -Thanks, Rob Hartmann!
Most insects have wings that appear to be transparent. Researchers from the University of Lund have found that they actually have rainbow colors, but the background of those wings makes all the difference in what the human eye sees.
“You hold the wing up against the light, so you can see the veins,” said study co-author Daniel Janzen, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “If you’re looking through a microscope, you try to get a clear view behind the wing. It’s the antithesis of getting wing color.”
The researchers studied wings under microscopes, against black backgrounds. But once Janzen, who breeds wasps for his research on caterpillar-parasite symbioses, started to look, colors could be seen by the naked eye as wings passed over insects’ black bodies.
This study looked at the wings of wasps and flies, and the team believes they may find similar results in other orders of insects. Link
by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff (Image credit: Flickr user Patricia van Casteren)
Bulls care little about the redness of a matador’s cape. Psychologists have been pretty sure about that since 1923, when George M. Stratton of the University of California published a study called “The Color Red, and the Anger of Cattle.” The full citation is:
“The Color Red, and the Anger of Cattle,” George M. Stratton, Psychological Review, vol. 30, no. 4, July 1923, pp. 321–5.
“It is probable,” Professor Stratton opined, “that this popular belief arises from the fact that cattle, and particularly bulls, have attacked persons displaying red, when the cause of the attack lay in the behavior of the person, in his strangeness, or in other factors apart from the color itself. The human knowledge that red is the color of blood, and that blood is, or seemingly should be, exciting, doubtless has added its own support to this fallacy.”
Professor Stratton, aided by a Miss Morrison and a Mr. Blodgett, conducted an experiment on several small herds of cattle,forty head altogether: a mixture of bulls and bullocks (castrated bulls) and cows and calves, including some who were accustomed to wandering the range and others who lived in barns.
The researchers obtained white, black, red and green strips of cloth, each measuring two by six feet. These they attached “endwise to a line stretched high enough to let the animals go easily under it; from this line the colors hung their 6 feet of length free of the ground, well-separated, and ready to flutter in the breeze.” (Image credit: Flickr user inthesitymad)
The cattle showed indifference to the banners, except sometimes when a breeze made the cloth flutter. Males and females reacted the same way, as did “tame” and “wild” animals. Red did nothing for them.
Farmers seem to have already suspected this. Professor Stratton surveyed some. He reports that “Of 66 such persons who have favored me with their careful replies, I find that 38 believe that red never excites cattle to anger; 15 believe that red usually does not excite them to anger, although exceptionally it may; 8 believe that it usually so excites, though exceptionally it may not; and 3 believe that it always so excites.”
One of those three dissenters described her experience with red-hating cattle: “A lively little Jersey cow whom I had known all her six years of life, chased me through a barbed wire fence when I was wearing a red dress and sweater, and never did so before or after. I changed to a dull gray, and reentered the corral, and she paid no attention to me, and let me feed and water her as usual. Also a Durham bull whom I had raised from a calf, and was a perfect family pet, chased me till I fell from sight through some brush when I was wearing the same outfit of crimson.”
More typical, however, was the farmer who told Professor Stratton: “In referring to the saying, ‘Like waving a red rag before a bull,’ I have found that to wave anything before a bull is dangerous business.” (Image credit: Flickr user Multimaniaco)
_____________________
This article is republished with permission from the July-August 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
Brody Qat attended a gathering of Santas as her character “Desaturated Santa”, which she introduced last year, and posted photographs at Flickr. To counter many accusations of Photoshoppage, she also posted a picture of her makeup and contact lenses to explain how it’s done. She said:
Many people find it hard to believe that someone would go to all the effort of creating a gray & white Santa suit and painting their face, when it’s “so much easier just to do it in Photoshop”. (Yes, but where’s the fun in THAT? Heck, why visit Paris when I can just Photoshop myself in front of a picture of the Eiffel Tower?)
I live in a bright yellow house in a mostly brown or brick neighborhood, so I am drawn to these colorful neighborhoods around the world. This picture is from Bo-Kaap, Cape Town, South Africa. See all 20 colorful cities at Buzzfeed. Link
How much attention did you pay to Crayola crayon colors when you were a kid (or parent)? Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, will test your memory, or maybe your guessing skills! Match the crayon scrawl to the color’s name. I scored 100%, which is totally due to my guessing skills. Link
This color footage was filmed even before movies had sound, and 13 years before a color feature film was released.
George Eastman House is the repository for many of the early tests made by the Eastman Kodak Company of their various motion picture film stocks and color processes. The Two-Color Kodachrome Process was an attempt to bring natural lifelike colors to the screen through the photochemical method in a subtractive color system. First tests on the Two-Color Kodachrome Process were begun in late 1914. Shot with a dual-lens camera, the process recorded filtered images on black/white negative stock, then made black/white separation positives. The final prints were actually produced by bleaching and tanning a double-coated duplicate negative (made from the positive separations), then dyeing the emulsion green/blue on one side and red on the other. Combined they created a rather ethereal palette of hues.”
Link -via Nag on the Lake
Previously: 19th Century Color Motion Picture.
Color photographs from up to 100 years ago! See pictures from the archives of Albert Kahn, who had collected 180,000 black and white photos and 72,000 autochrome plates by 1929. Autochrome was an early method of putting color into photos, involving potato starch in primary colors. It was first used by the Lumière brothers in 1907. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Musée Albert-Kahn)
In an essay at The Telegraph, photography critic and picture editor Lucy Davis muses about the palettes used by well-known artists.
Some artists mix every gradation of colour they will need for a painting before they start, others as they need them. “My freshly arranged palette, brilliant with contrasting colors, is enough to fire my enthusiasm,” noted Delacroix in his Journal in 1850. The French artist was meticulous in his arrangement of colours, and when unwell, would take his palette to bed and spend the entire day just mixing new shades.
The actual palettes of Renoir, Seurat, Degas, Delacroix (above), Moreau, Gauguin, and Van Gogh are illustrated, accompanied by commentary on how the physical layout of colors on the board may influence the figurative “palette” of color choices used by the artist for his work.
Link.
Several studies of American men and women find that if you ask people to identify their favorite color, women tend to select colors closer to red, and men on average tend to select colors around blue. The reason behind this difference is up in the air, but there are several theories. A recent academic paper proposes a new theory to add to the list, the ecological theory:
The authors here propose that humans prefer colors like blues and greens because those colors and ecologically healthy (blue skies, clean water, healthy vegetation), and do not prefer colors like brown because it’s associated with stuff that is ecologically unhealthy (like crap and things that are rotting).
Then they went about testing the theory by correlating color preference with objects that were judged favorable or unfavorable by the test subjects. Although the ecological theory incorporates parts of several other color theories, the data seems to support this idea more than previous theories. Link
Randall Munroe of xkcd conducted an online color survey, the results from 222,500 user sessions are ready. The aim of the survey was to find what names people associate with colors. As you can see, no one knows how to spell fuchsia. I had to stop and roll in the floor at the “disproportionally popular” color names by gender section. Link -via reddit
In this infographic, Stephen Von Worley observes that the number of discrete colors in a box of Caryola Crayons doubles about every 28 years. That’s an annual growth rate of 2.56%. Von Worley writes:
If the Law holds true, Crayola’s gonna need a bigger box, because by the year 2050, there’ll be 330 different crayons! Shortly thereafter, frazzled packaging designers rejoice, for to the rescue comes a revolution in household appliances: the new-fangled Replicator-Dissociator! Load it with the Crayola plugin, and you’re seconds away from every shade in the rainbow – no boxes required!
