ABSTRACT
Color is produced by the combined effect of physical characteristics and chemical aspects. Color perception, in turn, is a complex process involving such physical phenomena as transmission, refraction, absorption, and scattering, among others. The initial stages of color perception are physical, but the later stages involve chemical signals that are transformed into neural responses that will be interpreted by the brain as color. Three elements are conjoined: light, object, and observer. Thus, color evaluation is a complex, generally subjective task. However, the objective measurement of color is of huge economic importance, and efforts to achieve objective measures have involved numerous research groups. Currently, the tristimulus approach to color evaluation is most successful, and modern equipment has been designed based on this theory (see Chapter 2).
