I’d be all to happy to blame you, but sadly I cannot here.
ZCAM surely wasn’t you, but perhaps “inspired” by the idea that Filmlight has something they labeled a “CAM”.
He was also the knucklehead trying to sell folks that it could be done using a discrete sample model, despite glaring evidence to the contrary. I’m sure he ran away with his bag too.
This is seductive wishing on Hunt’s part, cleaving to Hunt forcing a humanist vantage on things. I promise that no where in any of the Bartleson papers, nor MacAdam, is this “sun-tanned” nonsense present. At least not in any of the papers I’ve read on the subject from them. Perhaps I overlooked it.
The reason this is nonsense in my mind is that it appears Hunt has already made his mind up. MacAdam and Bartleson don’t forward such hypotheses laden things in their cited works. If anything, they simply point out the confusing nature of the phenomena. In fact, as a counterpoint, Bartleson makes a few astute observations, clearly aware of the receptive field of the picture-text. For example:
In the case of the present experiment, for example, there was only one very simple image configuration: a simple portrait. Undoubtedly, more complex images, smaller areas of flesh, variations in viewing and adaptation conditions, and variations in the luminances and chromaticities of surrounding image areas, to name only a few factors, will exhibit an influence on the choice of optimum flesh reproduction.^12
Where I think Hunt grossly fails is in his reduction of spatiotemporal articulated regions to a singular quality. For example, in MacAdam’s work, he notes specifically:
On the other hand, when the print of the highest acceptance is masked and compared with the original subject, it seems quite pale.^3
The “pale” flies in the face of Hunt’s attempt at imbuing the preference toward the “sun-tanned” nonsense.
Picture-texts are an encoded signal, to be decoded by the author-reader. Where the idea of a “CAM” fails absolutely miserably is in the regions that, without acute focus, are cognized invisibly and transparently.
If we take a laser pointer in standard ecological cognition, blast it at a wall, it will appear “green” or “blue” or “red for example. It never appears “white”. Yet this common vernacular in picture-texts goes unnoticed. In fact, I challenge anyone here to look at highly pure sources of great brightness and suggest that “they appear achromatic” in vision. This does not happen. Ever.
Yet in picture texts this is not only common, but a mandatory vernacular.
So Hunt’s claim falls on its face when discussing “colour appearance”; he fails to separate the activity of standard ecological cognition from the act of cognizing a text. Literary texts involve a unique mode of cognition, and as such, so too do picture texts. This decoding, or active cognition, is unrelated to the standard model of propelling our bodies through space.
Consider the following example:
This sample from Grossberg^4 is a fascinating example in that the reification of “dog-ness” broadly is an exercise in Gestalt belongingness and continuation. The separation of the marks, and their unique constellations of consistency versus inconsistency, connect up to a constellation of signs. Despite no one having experienced the arrangement of visible light radiation in the form in the picture, we are able to orient the constellation of signs in the text as “dog-ness”. Importantly, it is a constellation of signs, not a singular sign.
In much the same way, we might be wise to consider Caucasian “skin-signs” not as a singular (EG: A singular chromaticity) but rather as a constellation. The constellation of these patches is what is actively reified by our cognition. That is, it’s not a singular patch that is reified, but the spatiotemporal relationship.
This broken ass picture nicely touches on the idea of a constellation of stimulus. There are variegated regions of high articulation, where we can get broad senses of gradations. Yet on the chest of the red character, there is suddenly no such gradation; the constellation of stimulus exists as “other” in relation to the field patterns around. Worse still, the constellation of signs points to a human-like figure, but the region near the torso is lacking the signs present in other regions of the picture-text.
Perhaps an interesting question can be had in how, on one hand, Dalmations in the Snow form a cohesive picture-text, absent of smooth gradations. Yet the picture-text abysmally formed by ACES, be a bed poop. Is there something about the continuity of spatiotemporal frequencies at work within the bounds of the picture-text? What happens when these broad frequency distributions are disrupted?
Looping back to Hunt and CAMs, we can ask ourselves what these nonsensical CAM models are doing with respect to picture-formation that they are not doing with respect to standard ecological cognition.
For starters, they are a three channel model operating on a closed domain. It is that closed domain that is delivering the picture-text cues that are highly desirable. Specifically, the attenuation of chroma toward achromatic at the higher side, and the amplification of chroma toward the lower side. And to repeat, as a “colour appearance model”, these things are falling flat on their faces; bright and pure stimuli do not attenuate to achromatic in standard ecological cognition, they are just painfully bright and pure.
This desirable trait is nothing more than exclusive to the three channel model and how crosstalk is manifested.
I would broadly agree, except greater care and attention should perhaps be paid to the model in the way that it crafts and engineers the attenuation of chroma on the higher side.
There are clear earmarks that the current three channel model is pooping the sheets here. I have seen more than a few pictures formed through the chain that has peculiar “kinks” in the attenuations. The diver images seem to provide some good examples here, but it is also noticeable on the formation of face gradations, specifically paler skin.
The reason that these issues should be focused on is that it is easier to push a picture toward posterizing than it is to recover it, and these visual kinks are similar. It is likely easier to create a kink than undo it.
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- Some Observations on the Reproduction of Flesh Colours, Bartleson, 1959.
- Apologies to anyone who happens to not be of the pasty Caucasian flesh variety. Caucasian flesh was sadly considered “flesh” in most of the research of this time. Similar unique peculiarities happen with darker skin, where “as measured” can look strangely “orange” for example. Here’s to hoping that moving forward we can extend our understanding to include the plethora of other human skin types and their related colour formations in picture-texts.
- Quality of Color Reproduction, MacAdam, 1951.
- How Humans Consciously See Paintings and Paintings Illuminate How Humans See, Grossberg, Zajac, 2017.