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Different browsers see different colors

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Re: Different browsers see different colors

#61

Post by ghusbands »

recursive wrote: post #47
mncharity wrote: post #45

> Most people know some basics of color theory. [...] And many people know that specific colors are really just wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. [...] There are many systems involved to turn an RGB triplet value into a specific wavelength of light. A 5-year old asks you "The Sun is a big hot ball! What color is the ball?". What do you tell them? They ask "And sunlight?" You say? Most first-tier astronomy…

I don't even know what the confusion is. Is the sun not white? It looks white.

Most people describe it as yellow, and if you google image search for "sun", most of them range from orange to yellow. Though it actually covers the full visual spectrum, much of the blue gets scattered, making the sky blue and the sun yellow.

Re: Different browsers see different colors

#62

Post by jdashg »

Daemon404 wrote: post #53
jdashg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that much of it is actually solved in theory, just not in practice. (I.e. we know what it should display, but browsers get it wrong still) There are both outstanding issues with browsers being accidentally wrong/incomplete (e.g. both Firefox and Chrome have issues with full-range videos displaying incorrectly, just with different videos), and also with various implementations deviating from standards to "…

It's been my experience that part of the reason browsers get stuff wrong even when it's clear what to do, is that entirely different teams work on parts of the browser that all need a poper color pipeline, and while one team will learn and do it correctly, the new team working on the diffrent part has to go through the same process again. You can see this, for example in Firefox's image pipeline which seems to assume…

Honestly a big reason is that there simply aren't tests.

Re: Different browsers see different colors

#64

Post by smallstepforman »

I've been working on a Vulkan rendering engine for an embedded bit of hardware, and even though I spend an insane amount of time getting the colour spaces correct (textures, tools, presentation format, etc) in the end the cheap LCD screen cheated with it's firmware (I wanted BT2020, but it kept on giving 601, I couldn't even get BT709). The firmware lied that it supported multiple formats (including P3), but it was just a menu option with no effect. My reference desktop monitor did show all the differences, so I know that engine code path was correct.

Re: Different browsers see different colors

#65

Post by lstamour »

KONAir wrote: post #29
mmcclure wrote: post #3

(Mux founder here, but adding some additional community bits to the conversation) Probably unsurprisingly, the (honestly absurd world of) color is a pretty consistent topic among video engineers. Color theory is one of those areas that people working directly with it see it as a completely unsolved problem, and everyone else largely takes it for granted. This is a small sample size, but these are all talks just from…

(I hate having to make these statements but I am not trolling) I was told search for "perfect" parity across users was in vain because perception of colour varied too much, from blood sugar level to physiology and etc. What is the true benefit of going after this on software side? I mean I am not understanding the difference it causes on artistic statement or emotional impact. I understand and support "true colour" a…

We're not talking about perceived colour in these articles. Instead at best we're talking about absolute colour as might be sent over a display cable or as might be presented on a calibrated screen. Even if the screen isn't calibrated or the user is partially colour blind, the values that are sent over the HDMI or DisplayPort cable do still matter. Those values tend to be 8-bit 0-255 values for R, B and G, though that's starting to change. I won't get into how 255,255,255 might be a different colour depending on what mode your computer monitor is in or how your cable signals the mode to the computer monitor, but the point of this article is that the colours in a video can vary based on how and when the video was recorded, mastered, etc. This is partially historical: if watching a DVD you'll have a smaller colour range than if watching a UHD 4K HDR Blu-Ray because back then most TVs couldn't display high contrast images or what we now refer to as HDR or Dolby Vision. There are other concerns, of course, such as framerate and resolution and even the shape of a pixel can change in some video files. So ... it's a complicated topic. :)

Re: Different browsers see different colors

#66

Post by joshspankit »

glandium wrote: post #49
recursive wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what the confusion is. Is the sun not white? It looks white.

Interesting related fact: Kids in the west usually draw the sun yellow, but in Japan, they draw it red.

Is that because of how it looks, cultural priming (other similar concepts are red, for example), or because of the red sun on the flag?

Re: Different browsers see different colors

#67

Post by mncharity »

recursive wrote: post #47
mncharity wrote: post #45

> Most people know some basics of color theory. [...] And many people know that specific colors are really just wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. [...] There are many systems involved to turn an RGB triplet value into a specific wavelength of light. A 5-year old asks you "The Sun is a big hot ball! What color is the ball?". What do you tell them? They ask "And sunlight?" You say? Most first-tier astronomy…

I don't even know what the confusion is. Is the sun not white? It looks white.

Yes, it's white. In space, and from the ground when it's not near the horizon, under almost all atmospheric conditions.

As for the confusion... oh my, such a rich area.

The Stanford Solar Center outreach site[1] could be a fun place to start. It manages "It is a common misconception that the Sun is yellow, or orange or even red." On a site heavily themed in, yes, yellow and orange and red. Other outreach sites don't even manage that warning, despite similar colors. It then continues with a common color misconception "However, the Sun is essentially all colors mixed together, which appear to our eyes as white." Followed by a miscolored ground spectrum[2], of which there's a diversity[3], on a page named GreenSun, reflecting a misconception that ground irradiance spectrum peaks in green (rather than 490 nm cyan/blue), and another misconception that spectrum peak determines object color, and thus another that the Sun is in some sense green.

In US popular culture, Sun color is yellow[4]. And that's pervasively used in K-12 astronomy and earth sciences illustrations, competing with orange.[5]

Astronomy textbooks, including the top 10-ish introductory astronomy college texts (thanks Library Genesis!), similarly use yellow. This is reinforced by "G2 class yellow star", while failing to mention that classification's blue "white"-point (Vega). And further reinforced by a diversity of aphysically colored H-R diagrams.[6]

We've known Sun color for a century, had detailed limb darkening and tint numbers for decades, and now years of intensive effort on stellar atmospheres in support of occultation and exoplanet work. And science education content manages to remain decoupled from all of that.

Confusion... sigh. There's a physics education research line, "if you think your lectures are working, your assessment also isn't". I'd extend it to "if you think your science students, content, and instructors, aren't deeply steeped in misconceptions, then your knowledge of your field's education research also is". Confused mess doesn't begin to cover it. The juxtaposition of good caring people putting in lots of (tragically not-broadly-collaborative) effort, with baseline that's so very ghastly... sigh.

If you know of anyone/project/lab/forum/etc with an interest in speculative exploring "what might science education conceptions/progressions/interactives look like if they weren't a disaster?", even if, as with Sun color, there's little hope of fixing it any year soon, I'd very much appreciate hearing of them. Thanks!

[1] http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/GreenSun.htm... [2] http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/images/solar... [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=solar+sunlight+spectrum&tbm=... [4] https://www.google.com/search?q=drawing+of+Sun&tbm=isch [5] https://www.google.com/search?q=solar+system&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=winter+summer+sun+diagram&tb... [6] https://www.google.com/search?q=Hertzsprung-Russell+Diagram&...

Re: Different browsers see different colors

#68

Post by magicalhippo »

mmcclure wrote: post #3

(Mux founder here, but adding some additional community bits to the conversation) Probably unsurprisingly, the (honestly absurd world of) color is a pretty consistent topic among video engineers. Color theory is one of those areas that people working directly with it see it as a completely unsolved problem, and everyone else largely takes it for granted. This is a small sample size, but these are all talks just from…

Reminded me of Colorful Notions[1], a BBC documentary from the 80s. I found it illustrated a lot of the weird quirks of colors with rather nice demonstrations.

[1]: https://archive.org/details/ColourfulNotions

Re: Different browsers see different colors

#69

Post by pdkl95 »

jdashg wrote: post #62
Daemon404 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been my experience that part of the reason browsers get stuff wrong even when it's clear what to do, is that entirely different teams work on parts of the browser that all need a poper color pipeline, and while one team will learn and do it correctly, the new team working on the diffrent part has to go through the same process again. You can see this, for example in Firefox's image pipeline which seems to assume…

Honestly a big reason is that there simply aren't tests.

I miss the days when browsers took pride in announcing[1] their new version passed Acid2/Acid3. Sure, the tests had issues, but they were self contained and anyone could see which browsers mostly passed and which were missing half of the features. Unfortunately, the modern trend towards monopoly is increasingly hostile to ideas like "open standards" and "interoperability", so I doubt we'll see this kind of test used again anytime soon.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2#Timeline_of_passing_appl...

Re: Different browsers see different colors

#70

Post by [deleted] »

ghusbands wrote: post #61
recursive wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what the confusion is. Is the sun not white? It looks white.

Most people describe it as yellow, and if you google image search for "sun", most of them range from orange to yellow. Though it actually covers the full visual spectrum, much of the blue gets scattered, making the sky blue and the sun yellow.

[deleted]
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