Light & Color

It isn't by oversight that we have chosen to entitle this page Light & Color rather than the more frequently used phrase Color & Light. The fact of the matter is that it is light - or to be more precise the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with wavelengths between 400 and 700 nm - which is the more fundamental property. These wavelengths are perceived by the human eye as color.

Naturally, for practical purposes it is necessary to tame human perceptions into the constraints of a model that can represent the perception in a reproducible and quantifiable way. This has lead to the development of various models for representing and reproducing color. An understanding of these models though not essential is certainly very useful to developers and programmers. We offer a brief explanation of the three principal models and a color generator tool for experiment.