S Afr Optom 2012 71(3) 133-143 Colour spaces - a review of historic and modern colour models* GD Hastings and A Rubin Department of Optometry, University of Johannesburg, PO Box 524, Auckland Park, 2006 South Africa <
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[email protected]> Received 12 April 2012; revised version accepted 31 August 2012 Abstract colour models and a brief history of the advance- ments that have led to our current understanding Although colour is one of the most interest- of the complicated phenomenon of colour. (S Afr ing and integral parts of vision, most models and Optom 2012 71(3) 133-143) methods of colourimetry (the measurement of col- our) available to describe and quantify colour have Key words: Colour space, colour model, col- been developed outside of optometry. This article ourimetry, colour discrimination. presents a summary of some of the most popular Introduction textiles, and computer graphics industries because as these industries became more sophisticated, more The description and quantification of colour, and universal, and more commercial, models and systems the even more complicated matter of colour percep- needed to be evolved to allow an increasingly more tion, have interested philosophers and scientists for precise and comprehensive description of colour and over 2500 years, since at least the times of the ancient colour perception. Greeks1. Colour is a fundamental part of the sense of Some of the earliest attempts at representing colour sight and has a fascinating effect on how people per- seem to have been inspired by the change of night ceive the world - the poet Julian Grenfell even went to day and involve a linear (one-dimensional) colour so far as to say that “Life is Colour”2.