Color in Computer Vision: Fundamentals and Applications

Chapter 1: Introduction

Color is one of the most important and fascinating aspects of the world surrounding us. To comprehend the broad characteristics of color, a range of research fields has been actively involved, including physics (light and reflectance modeling), biology (visual system), physiology (perception), linguistics (cultural meaning of color), and art.

From a historical perspective, covering more than 400 years, prominent researchers contributed to our present understanding of light and color. Snell and Descartes (1620–1630) formulated the law of light refraction. Newton (1666) discovered various theories on light spectrum, colors, and optics. The perception of color and the influence on humans has been studied by Goethe in his famous book “Farbenlehre” (1840). Young and Helmholtz (1850) proposed the trichromatic theory of color vision. Work on light and color resulted in quantum mechanics elaborated by Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Niels Bohr. In art (industrial design), Albert Munsell (1905) invented the theory on color ordering in his “A Color Notation.” Further, the value of the biological and therapeutic effects of light and color have been analyzed, and views on color from folklore, philosophy, and language have been articulated by Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Wittgenstein.

Over the last decades, with the technological advances of printers, displays, and digital cameras, an explosive growth in the diversity of needs in the field of color computer vision has been ...