The title is a little misleading, isn't it? You can represent the colors without negative colors, that's what you do with the XYZ basis they talk about. What the article claims is that you can't replicate all possible color stimuli in the physical world with three monochromatic bases.
I finally understood why high-quality ink jets have so many inks. They split the visible color space up into a higher order polygon than the basic RGB triangle.
...and the happy news is that this stuff is within the possibilities of current technology: make a computer-controlled array of LEDs, each LED producing a narrow frequency band. Given sufficiently powerful and narrow-banded LEDs, this kind of light source could simulate any spectrum.
Natural medicine freaks often complain that artificial lightning doesn't produce the same sensory response (and thus psychological well-being) as sunlight. Our fictional light-source could simulate any light condition, and even change during the day. We would be able to prove them right or wrong.
I've been bitching about this for quite some time, because I really want something like this. I'm glad others are thinking the same thought.
> Given sufficiently powerful and narrow-banded LEDs, this kind of light source could simulate any spectrum.
As far as I know, this is currently extremely unrealistic, if you're looking for something like a display. If you just want a light bulb type source, you could maybe do a rough approximation, very expensively.
> complain that artificial lightning doesn't produce the same sensory response (and thus psychological well-being) as sunlight.
It empirically does not produce the same sensory response. Psychological well-being is a bit harder to measure.
Does sunlight induce 'psychological well-being' only by its energy in the visible spectra, or are there components outside the range to which eyes are sensitive that have an effect?
This helps to account for our optical “absolute pitch”, because the three types of cones are effectively “tuned” to respond to certain absolute frequencies.
no it doesn't, because inside our ear there are stereocilia "tuned" to each specific frequency one can hear. Yet we can not generally discern absolute pitch.
True, but it makes sense that it's easier to discern the 3 different rod responses absolutely than the 3000 (according to the article) different response functions of the ear.
I finally understood why high-quality ink jets have so many inks. They split the visible color space up into a higher order polygon than the basic RGB triangle.