

Munsell Color Space data files - martian
http://www.cis.rit.edu/mcsl/online/munsell.php

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jacobolus
Anyone looking to understand color science should track down Mark Fairchild’s
book _Color Appearance Models_ ,
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470012161/>

The best color science resource I know of online is Bruce MacEvoy’s website,
<http://handprint.com/LS/CVS/color.html> and those interested in the Munsell
system in particular should see this page:
<http://handprint.com/HP/WCL/color7.html>

I’ve been meaning to finish writing the Wikipedia page about the Munsell
system, especially the woefully inadequate history section, for more than two
years now, but never get around to it; in any case, feel free to leave
feedback about its current state.

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Hexstream
The Munsell color space is apparently more intuitive than even HSV (Hue is
always intuitive but I'm having a hard time predicting the effect of changing
Saturation and Value sometimes). It relates strongly to the way we actually
perceive color because it's defined in those terms.

I've been meaning to use it for some time but last I checked, it seemed
encumbered by patents and that the only way was to use some proprietary
programs you have to pay for... I didn't know these data mapping files were
available!

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jacobolus
HSV is not very “intuitive” at all, being an RGB cube, turned on one corner
and then squished a bit into a cylinder. It’s still dependent on the mostly
arbitrary (with respect to human perception) geometry of whatever RGB
input/output device is being used.

In HSV, colors of the same “hue” generally have slightly different apparent
hues (and the particular difference depends on the RGB space chosen), and
worse, difference in hue angle has little correspondence to perceptual
difference between hues, so that if you try to “rotate” the hue of an image
you distort all of the hue relationships therein.

But you’re right that it doesn’t butcher hue as badly as the other color
attributes, which are not remotely close to perceptually uniform.

* * *

As for Munsell, it’s basically just a big look-up table, rather than being
defined by formulas (as, e.g., CIELAB or CIECAM02 are). So if you have the OSA
renotation data from this link, you pretty much have just as much to go on as
anyone does. Figuring out how to interpolate that look-up table isn’t totally
obvious, I suppose, but it’s not the hardest thing in the world either.

If you want to use your computer’s existing color space conversion stack with
the Munsell data, Bruce Lindbloom made a look-up-table-based ICC profile that
will round trip CIELAB to what he calls “UP Lab”:
<http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html?UPLab.html>

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Hexstream
If you call HSV "not very 'intuitive' at all", I'm curious how you'd call RGB!
(For colors other than gray shades and pure red, green or blue)

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wlievens
RGB isn't meant to be intuitive, I think.

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almost
For those asking "What on earth is Munsell Color Space?":
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsell>

~~~
martian
I discovered Munsell color space yesterday. It would seem to have amazing
applications in graphic design, cartography, etc. I'm surprised it's not more
widely recognized.

