BOOK REVIEWS Colour Art & Science, edited by Trevor Lamb and Janine Bourriau, Cambridge University Press, New York, New York, 1995. Hardbound $59.95, Softbound $24.95. 237 pp.
Bridget Riley’s ‘‘Colour for the Painter.’’ The selection of art used to illustrate the points in both of these essays further enhanced the discussion. It changed the way that I looked at some of the old familiar works. In these two chapters as well as the others, I appreciated the further reading lists included. Whether or not color is part of our profession, it has meaning, probably a different meaning, for each of us. It provides a meeting point for art and science. So does this book. John Mollon, concluded his essay, ‘‘Seeing colour,’’ with the statement, ‘‘In other words, we judge colours by the company they keep.’’ This could have been selected as the theme transcending all the essays, from the discussion of shadowing in the history of art, through colour for the painter, to camouflage in nature, the associations of red with fire in culture (Is fire red?), and language. Are the red and green terms in the Hanunoo language denoting a traditional color axis, or rather are they a wetness vs. dryness (freshness vs. desiccation) dimension? These essays enlarge the readers perspective for color. I can think of no other book that brings such different views of color together so well. Colour Art & Science is a book you will want to own, and is a real steal for the price.
What do Bridget Riley, an abstract painter; John Mollon, a Reader in Experimental Psychology at Cambridge University; Denis Baylor, a visual physiologist; John Gage, an art historian; Malcolm Longair, a natural philosopher; Peter Parks, a director and producer of films, who also specializes in marine biology and special effects; John Lyons, a linguist; and David Bomford, Senior Restorer of Paintings at the National Gallery, have in common? They all gave presentations in the Darwin College Lecture Series on Colour: Art and Science. Their eight essays are collected into a handy and colorful volume with the same title as the lecture series. The book is edited by Trevor Lamb and Janine Bourriau and published by Cambridge University Press. The collection has the following structure. The first two chapters are on art and art history. Then comes the physics of color, followed by the eye and how it works, and seeing color. Then follows an essay on color in nature. The final two essays in the book deal with color in culture and linguistics. Each of the contributors is so well versed that all the essays reach through history and across professional barriers. Let me take Peter Parks’ essay, ‘‘Colour in Nature,’’ as an example of how each chapter is rich and diverse, having something of interest for everyone. First, this essay probably would be more correctly titled ‘‘Colour in Aquatic Life,’’ however, please do not take that as a limiting factor. Putting that aside, Mr. Parks begins with a little color science, the challenges of photography in the aquatic environment, then moves quickly into perception factors of both humans and other animals. For the artist, who is interested in pigments, he talks about the sources of coloring materials and the influence of the environment on the colors produced. Contrasting the biological pigments and dyes, he goes on to talk about the types of color, such as interference colors produced by specific structures. Then, for the biologist, he talks about the reasons and uses of color including mimicry, camouflage, and warning. In all these areas, as well as examples of bioluminescence and transparency, the essay is enhanced by interesting color figures exemplifying the points. Perhaps because I am usually preoccupied with the science of color and its measurement, I particularly enjoyed the other approaches to color found in this book. To me, the chapter, ‘‘History of Colour in Art,’’ by David Bomford was fascinating. Also, I thoroughly enjoyed
Any serious computer graphics programmer’s or researcher’s collection is incomplete without a copy of Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice. This book has long been a definitive computer graphics reference. Written to be used both as a textbook (complete with exercises at the end of every chapter) and as a reference book, this book assumes little or no prior knowledge on the reader’s part, but covers most topics in considerable depth. In keeping with the fact that most computer code written nowadays is in the C programming language, this most recent version has all of the examples in C rather than in Pascal. The book contains 21 chapters, which span the broad field of computer graphics. Chapter 4 introduces graphics hardware technology. It begins by explaining DVST and CRT technologies, and then covers CRT displays in depth, describing, for example, random-scan displays,
Volume 22, Number 1, February 1997
CCC 0361-2317/97/010065-03
/
8a0a$$1820
01-16-97 17:14:02
ELLEN C. CARTER
Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice, Second Edition in C, by James D. Foley, Andries van Dam, Steven K. Feiner, and John F. Hughes, Addison–Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, Massachusetts, 1996, Hardbound, 1174 pp., $68.81
crras
W-Color Res
65
raster displays, and shadow-masking. Because raster displays are, by far, the most common type of dynamic video display devices in use today, four chapters are dedicated to raster displays. Chapters 2 and 3 detail algorithms for drawing two-dimensional primitives, display clipping, and anti-aliasing. Chapters 18 and 19 cover various algorithms and architectures of raster graphics systems. Much of the book is dedicated to three-dimensional graphics algorithms. Chapters 5 and 6 give a complete treatment of three-dimensional viewing, describing matrix transformations and their use in specifying orthogonal and perspective projections of three-dimensional scenes onto the two-dimensional computer screen. Chapters 7, 11, 12, 15, 20, and 21 cover other aspects of 3D graphics algorithms, such as representing curves, surfaces, and solids, determining visible surfaces, generating realistic scenes using shadows, fog, and fractals, volume rendering, animating, and using hierarchical display models. Chapter 14 goes into detail on techniques for virtual reality, including stereopsis, motion parallax, anti-aliasing, and interaction with other senses. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 cover human– computer interaction, from low-level hardware to software interface design considerations. Chapter 17 details the manipulation and storage of images, going into depth on two-dimensional image filtering, processing, compositing, and transforming. This book is not just about computer graphics algorithms, though. It is cited by James D. Murray and William vanRyper in Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats, 1st Edition (pp. 54–55) among 11 ‘‘books about color and colorimetry.’’ Chapter 9 details dialog design, and discusses the use of color in visual coding, citing Christ’s work in the field. Chapter 13 covers achromatic and colored light in great detail. Display-related topics such as gamma correction, color approximation, and halftone approximation are treated in depth. A section is devoted to chromatic color, in which several color-order systems such as Munsell’s and Ostwald’s are introduced. Perceptual terms such as hue, saturation, lightness, brightness, tint, shade, and tone, as well as basic colorimetry terms such as dominant wavelength, excitation purity, and luminance are all thoroughly explained. Results of research by Jones and Lowry and Bedford and Wyszecki are cited in a discussion of the number of just noticeable color differences as a function of wavelength. A large portion of the chapter is dedicated to color spaces. The CIE chromaticity diagram is introduced and discussed at length. Color models for raster graphics (such as HSV, HLS, and HVC) and others (such as CMY, YIQ, and RGB) are presented in great detail. Algorithms to convert between color models are also presented. A set of color plates do an outstanding job of depicting the color models and graphically illustrating their characteristics. Another section, which is devoted to color image reproduction and approximation, describes the undercolor removal technique and the median-cut and popularity algorithms for mapping an image to a reproduction with a limited set of
colors. Chapter 16 covers the topics of illumination and shading. Illumination types such as ambient lighting and point-source lighting are discussed. Reflection (diffuse and specular) and light attenuation (by distance and by atmospheric effects) are defined, and algorithms for visualizing them are presented. Techniques for realistic shading of surfaces (such as Gouraud and Phong shading) are also presented in detail. Algorithms for effectively and efficiently rendering shadows and refractive materials are covered thoroughly. In the presentation of all these topics, the authors do not simply present algorithms for rendering. The underlying physics is explained as well. After reading Chapter 16, one has a working knowledge of light flux, radiance and irradiance, reflectivity, refraction, attenuation, polarization and the fresnel equation, and radiosity. The book boasts over 100 high-quality color plates, which illustrate methods and models described in the text. In addition, nearly every page has an illustration to accompany the text. This classic computer graphics reference is informative and easy to follow, for students and experts alike. MATTHEW P. CARTER
Publications Briefly Mentioned Journal of the Color Science Association of Japan, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1996). FOREWORD
Greetings from New President, Munehira Akita REPORT
AIC Interim Meeting ’96 in Sweden ESSAY
The Color of World Heritage—The Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama—The Traditional Houses in The Gassho Style, Masao Yamagishi Color in The Cinema, Hiroko Matsuda In My Case, I Am Studying Chromatics in This Way, Miyuki Ohshima What I Am Thinking on ‘‘Color Coordinator Examination,’’ Hitomi Gonda ABSTRACT OF THE SPECIAL LECTURE AT THE 27TH ANNUAL MEETING OF C.S.A.J.
Color Recognition in a Chimpanzee, Tetsuro Matsuzawa ORIGINAL PAPERS
Study on the Emotional Effects of Pattern and Color, Part 2(1) Effects of Single Colors, and Their Arrangement
66
COLOR research and application
/
8a0a$$1820
01-16-97 17:14:02
crras
W-Color Res
