Visualizing 3-D color

Recently I have been exploring the use of colors to add value and interest to my StarTraX web app, and in the process I have delved into some interesting areas of the perception of color and the physiology of color vision that I thought would make an interesting paper. What I have come to realize is that color is fundamentally three dimensional. Whatever method you use to describe a color, you need three parameters in the definition: it can't be done with fewer.

In this paper I've explored the RGB, HSV and YCbCr color spaces that are used by various technologies to describe color and practiced my new-found skills of graphics creation and animation.

To provide the best presentation of the animations that I have used in this story, I have split the material over a number of web pages and provided what I hope is intuitive navigation.

The animations use a a lot of your computer's processing power and, if presented all at once on a single page, would cause performance problems when viewed from smart phones and tablets.

• Some background info about light
• The RGB color space
• The HSV color space
• The YCbCr color space
• The Rainbow and the missing colors.
• The 4-dimensional universe

Conclusion

• Color is very interesting!
• Color is 3-Dimensional
• Color can be described many ways: RGB, HSV, YCbCR and lots more.
• Different color systems can be used for investigating nature.
• There are more colors in nature than in the spectrum.
• The rainbow is really interesting.
• The universe really is 4-dimensional.