ABSTRACT
Color is a perception that is manifested in response to a narrow span of the electromagnetic spectrum emitted by light sources (e.g., sunlight). Light itself has no color and color does not exist by itself; it only exists in the mind of the viewer. Color is a relative perception, and when color material is described, further information about the conditions of measurement must be provided (e.g., kind and quality of the light, background settings). Moreover, the same physical stimulus will produce different responses in different detectors (viewers); thus, color can be divided into two stages. The first consists of pure physical phenomena and requires three elements: a source of light, an object
(
matter in general
),
and the detector
(e.g., an eye, a diode)
,
which functions on the same principle as a photographic camera. In the second, a complicated and incompletely known process occurs, and the eye receptors transmit information that the brain will interpret as color.
