Here I share my work on light and color science, from lighting design to digital color. You will find interactive tools for calculating color and exploring light sources and color samples. The site also introduces my book, Seventeen Eyes, on how we learned to measure color. My colorimetry library provides the calculations and is also available for use in your own web applications.
To describe the color of white light, typically a correlated temperature and tint value are used, calculated through complex algorithms that rely on x and y chromaticity coordinates or X, Y, and Z tri-stimulus values. This easy-to-use tool implements a fast, high-accuracy bisectional search method based on Robertson’s algorithm.
Learn how good you are at discriminating colors with this app. It uses four colored quadrants, three of which are the same color and one with a slightly different hue. The test has six rounds, each with eight different hues. Your task is to click the quadrant that doesn’t match the others.
Access the library’s illuminant data, view spectral irradiance plots, chromaticity values, and Color Rendering Indices. Use this tool to familiarize yourself with different lamps’ spectral properties and color rendering characteristics. Copy spectral data into your device’s clipboard for use in other applications.
Browse measured samples from Munsell color books. Choose a collection and a hue page, then click a sample to see its color values and spectral reflectance—the fraction of light it reflects at each wavelength. The measurements come from the University of Eastern Finland and Robin Myers.