bright earth: art and the invention of color

BOOK REVIEWS

Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color. Philip Ball.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2001, 382 pp,Hardcover $30.

This book was a pleasure to read and is recommended toeveryone with an interest in the history of the colorants,especially those used by artists. The book covers the periodsbeginning with the earliest records and continuing to thepresent day, although the the second half of the 20th centuryis not covered in the same depth as earlier periods. Visionand technical color receive perfunctory treatment but are notthe book’s main strength.

The English author, Philip Ball, majored in chemistry atthe University of Oxford, received his Ph.D in physics fromthe University of Bristol and is currently a consulting editorfor the journal, Nature. He has written five other bookswhich dealt with molecular chemistry, new materials, pat-tern formation in nature and the last one Life’s Matrix: aBiography of Water. His background in chemistry and phys-ics brings a fresh viewpoint to a field dominated by arthistorians, conservators and those few artists, such as SirCharles Eastlake, who published research on art materials in1847.

This book is clearly written with the general reader inmind, but contains enough detail that this reviewer tooklonger than usual to read it because there were so many bitsof information worth jotting down. Considering how little ispublished on pigments and artists’ paints, we are fortunatethat several noteworthy books on these subjects have beenpublished in the last twenty years. These books overlap, andin some ways extend, material covered by this book. How-ever, Bright Earth presents a unique combination of infor-mation and felicitous writing.

Individuals who conserve works of art, indeed anyonewho needs technical details about historic pigments, willfind the beautiful National Gallery of Art series of books onpigments essential. There are three volumes to date, eachcontaining several extensive papers by different conserva-tors on pigments found in early paintings. The first volumeof Artists Pigments, A Handbook of their History and Char-acteristics, edited by Robert L. Feller, was published in1986. Ashol Roy edited the second volume published in1993; and the third volume, edited by Elisabeth WestFitzhugh, was published in 1997.

One way to characterize Bright Earth is to compare theinformation it provides with that given in other books on thesame subject. The ancient pigment, Egyptian blue, can serveas an example of how the same pigment is treated in BrightEarth and in Josef Riederer’s section on the pigment inVolume 3 of Artists’ Pigments.

On page 52, Ball addresses Egyptian blue, “The bluepigment known as Egyptian frit or Egyptian blue, which has

been identified in artifacts from around 2500 B.C., is not aproduct of blind chance, a serendipitous outcome of fusingnatural materials at random. It is wrought with precision andforethought, a blend of one part lime (calcium oxide) andone part copper oxide with four parts quartz (silica). Theraw ingredients are minerals: chalk or limestone, a coppermineral such as malachite, and sand. They are fired in a kilnat temperatures of between 800 and 900 degrees Celsius(1,470–1,650 degrees Fahrenheit). The temperature is cru-cial, and we must suppose that the Egyptians were able tocontrol firing conditions with considerable accuracy. Theresult is an opaque, brittle material, which is made into apigment by grinding it to a powder. It is the oldest syntheticpigment, a Bronze Age blue.”

Riederer also begins by defining Egyptian blue as acalcium copper silicate that has been heated to approxi-mately 850°C. He gives its Colour Index Name and Con-stitution number and a list of common names that have beenused for the pigment at different times and in variouscountries. He says that the earliest examples of its use comefrom the Fourth Dynasty (2613–2494 B.C.) including asarcophagus and the sculptures of Rahotep now in theEgyptian Museum in Cairo. He describes at length its usethroughout ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and continuing inEurope until the Middle Ages. He specifies individual stud-ies and includes tables of analysis by emission spectros-copy, X-ray fluorescence, atomic absorption, neutron acti-vation and X-ray diffraction. A list is given of instanceswhere Egyptian blue has been found outside of Egypt. Thepaper closes with a bibliography and four pages of refer-ences. Ball recounts interesting facts while Riederer definesthe pigment.

People interested in contemporary artists and modernartists’ paints, and how these paints effect the painted im-age, will find The Impact of Modern Paints written by JoCrook and Tom Learner informative. The paints, however,are discussed only in general terms and pigments are noteven listed in the index. While Bright Earth closes with adiscussion of new media, this is the starting point for thebook by Crook and Learner. Both books refer to Mexicanpainter, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and his workshop in NewYork in the 1930’s as the beginning of the use of new mediaby painters. Both describe the use of Duco and Ripolinenamels, solution acrylic, emulsion acrylic and alkyd paints;sometimes even quoting the same statements made by fa-mous artists. Crook and Learner discuss paints from theviewpoint of the artist, so their book stresses individualartists, their techniques and goals, rather than technicalinformation. Since the authors, like Ball, are English, theartists they cover are Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, RichardHamilton, David Hockney, John Hoyland, Roy Lichten-

Volume 28, Number 3, June 2003 229

stein, Morris Louis, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella and AndyWarhol.

Readers looking for technical information about modernpigments and paints should refer to Industrial OrganicPigments by Willy Herbst and Klaus Hunger published in1993.

While somewhat weak on current materials, BrightEarth’s strength lies in interesting facts about colorants seenfrom a chemist’s viewpoint and based on historical research.A random example taken from page 201: “Who wouldsuspect that a pea plant native to India should have anythingto do with shellfish in the Mediterranean? Yet the organiccompound responsible for the Imperial purpura differs fromthe blue extract of the Indigofera plant only to the extent ofhaving a couple of bromine atoms where hydrogens sit inindigo. Why shellfish should produce such a close variant of(chemists would say derivative) of a complex substancefound in a plant is not at all clear.

The Roman writer Vitruvius refers to indigo in the firstcentury A.D., the first mention of the dye in the West. Plinysays that it is second only to Tyrian purple and hints at thekinship of its rich, dark hue with that of the Imperial color:‘Indigo . . . comes from India, where it attaches itself as amud to the foam of the reeds. When it separates in thismanner, it is black; on dilution, however, it yields a beau-tiful blue-to-purple color. A second kind of indigo floats onthe vats in the purple dye houses, which is the foam ofpurple’. The second kind may be the result of light-induceddegradation of the Tyrian purple itself to indigo by loss ofbromine . . . .’’

This discussion of indigo follows a longer and moredetailed history of the famous color known as Tyrian orImperial purple. As the sections quoted above indicate,throughout the book the author fleshes out the connectionbetween chemistry and the technology of a particular pe-riod, as shown through the production and use of colorants.The book contains two sections of small color reproductionsto illustrate points made in the text. It concludes with notesfor each chapter, a bibliography and an index.

1. Feller RF. Editor, Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of their History andCharacteristics, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,1986.

2. Roy A. Editor, Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of their History andCharacteristics, Volume 2, National Gallery of Art, distributed byOxford University Press, New York, 1993.

3. Fitzhugh, EW. Editor, Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of their Historyand Characteristics, Volume 3, National Gallery of Art, distributed byOxford University Press, New York, 1997.

4. Crook J, and Learner T. The Impact of Modern Paints, Watson-GuptillPublications, New York, 2000.

5. Herbst SW, and Hunger K. Industrial Organic Pigments, VCH, NewYork, 1993.

JOY TURNER LUKE

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).DOI 10.1002/col.10150

Basic Principles of Textile Coloration. Arthur D. Broad-bent. Society of Dyers and Colourists, Bradford, UnitedKingdom, 2001. ISBN: 0-901956-76-7, 578 pp.

The author is a Professor in the Department of ChemicalEngineering at the University of Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke,Quebec, Canada and is a respected researcher in the field oftextile chemistry and dyeing. In Basic Principles of TextileColoration, he has succeeded in the arduous task of clearlyexplaining the basics of both textile chemistry and colorscience in a manner that is interesting and useful to either astudent of textile science or a chemist who is new to thefield of textiles. For the reader who wishes to delve deeperinto these subjects, useful references are included at the endof each chapter.

As a teacher of textiles and color science, I am delightedto add this book to my library. It fills a longstanding needfor an updated, comprehensive, reader-friendly textbook forundergraduate students or beginning graduate students intextile science. With respect to format and coverage, it isreminiscent of Trotman’s, Dyeing and Chemical Technol-ogy of Textile Fibres, which I first encountered some 20�years ago as a student in a three-course sequence on fiberchemistry, dyeing, and textile finishing. Later, as an instruc-tor, I used selected parts of the 1984 6th edition, the mostrecent edition of Trotman, as the textbook in an advancedtextiles course that I taught for several years. Arthur Broad-bent’s book is a welcome replacement for the trusty butdated Trotman work. What is new in this book are thecomponents that address new developments in fibers anddyes, sections on textile printing, water treatment, researchin dyeing theory and textile finishing processes, and thebasics of color measurement and colorant formulation.

The 25-chapter book begins with an introductory chapteron textiles, dyes, and dyeing, including a brief history thedevelopment of dyes and dyeing procedures, an overview offiber and dye classification and textile manufacturing, andan explanation of the electromagnetic spectrum. This isfollowed by a chapter on fibrous polymers, in which poly-merization of natural and synthetic fibers is explained. Fourchapters on fibers detail the chemistry of synthetic, naturalcellulosic, manufactured cellulosic, and protein fibers.

The majority of the book, 13 chapters, focuses on dyesand dyeing, including dyeing theory, auxiliary chemicals,water treatment, dyeing machinery, and the particulars ofdyeing within each of the various classifications of dyes. Asingle chapter on printing covers the traditional and some ofthe newer methods of fabric and carpet printing, but regret-tably, does not address recent developments in digital print-ing of textiles. There is also a single chapter on mechanical,chemical and other methods of textile finishing.

Of primary interest to readers of Color Research andApplication are the chapters on color. In a book that coversso many different subjects, the amount of space devoted tocolor theory and measurement is necessarily limited. Thereare two chapters that clearly explain the color basics. Thefirst includes a brief discussion of color perception, a moredetailed explanation of light sources and illuminants, reflec-

230 COLOR research and application

tion and transmission spectrophotometry, instrument geom-etry, and the color matching experiments that formed thebasis of the CIE standard observer. Sections on the CIEcolorimetric system, derivation of chromaticity coordinatesand tristimulus values are well-written, and would serve asan excellent supplement to class lectures on these subjects.CIE color specification, metamerism, and whiteness arepresented, and the CIELAB system, widely used in thetextile industry, is discussed briefly. Two pages are devotedto the Munsell system. Unfortunately, other color-ordersystems are not addressed. Although this chapter is entitled“Color Measurement”, there is no mention of sample han-dling and differences in sample preparation for measure-ment of fibers, yarns, and fabrics.

The color measurement chapter is followed by a chapteron color differences and colorant formulation. This chapterhighlights the major color difference equations that are usedin the field of textiles and dyeing. There is a general dis-cussion of color difference equations, namely CIE lightness,chroma, and hue differences, followed by a concise expla-nation of CMC and CIE-1994 systems, and their use insetting acceptability tolerances for matching. The problemof shade sorting is addressed, followed by discussion of the555 shade sorting system. The chapter concludes with agood explanation of colorant formulation and application ofthe Kubelka-Munk equation.

Several important color-related topics are not addressedin this book. Except for a brief mention of fluorescentwhitening agents, problems associated with color measure-ment of fluorescent materials are not discussed, nor areother specialty color appearance effects. Types and featuresof color measurement instruments are not discussed in anydetail. And, for students of color science, more attention tothe issue of color communication within the designer-col-orist-buyer-consumer cycle would be helpful.

This book promises to become a staple in textile sciencecurricula, and a valuable resource for researchers and pro-fessionals in the textile industry.

HELEN H. EPPS, PHDPublished online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).DOI 10.1002/col.10152

Theories, Technologies, Instrumentalities of Color: An-thropological and Historiographic Perspectives. Ed-ited by Barbara Saunders and Jaap van Brakel. Lanham,MA, University Press of America, 2002, 407 pp. hard-cover $77.00

This book is the result of a workshop on the subject held inMay 2000 in Leuven, Belgium. The editors are culturalanthropologist/philosopher and, respectively, philosopherand are well known for their strongly negative views on theenterprise of color science. The participants were English,European and some American philosophers, psychologists,science historians, with a smattering of people whose namesare known in color science: de Weert, Mausfeld, and Whit-

tle. One might say that all are members of a group blowingthe same horn: they are all more or less negative about theachievements of color science.

What are the complaints? To present a quote: “Whatcharacterizes this science is not merely that it is a laboratoryscience, but that its creation, the manufactured phenomenon‘color,’ is created on the basis of the mathematically definedchromatic model-in-thought. If this is grasped, then theterms of color science—from genes and ganglion cells,through ‘categories,’ to regularities of the terrestrialworld—are either absolutely irrelevant or must defend theirclaim to relevance in other terms. Color science might thenadmit its contingency and set its hubris and cosmic/geneticschemes aside. . .” Strong tobacco! But not without kernelsof truth, even if not just viewed from the absolutist point ofview of its author, Ms. Saunders. Aside from the Introduc-tion by Saunders, the book consists of eleven essays and thesame number of responses/commentaries by selected atten-dants. Even if one cannot take the basic claims seriously(after all, we live in an imperfect world) the book makesinteresting and thought-provoking reading.

A key subject that has stimulated Saunders and vanBrakel for many years is the theory by Berlin and Kay thatcolor terms in the languages of the world have uniformlydeveloped in the same manner (which van Brakel calls aPanglossian or Whiggish account). The controversy strikesthis reviewer as comparable to the nature-nurture contro-versy about intelligence and other matters of psychology. Inthe end it seems likely that both biology as well as culturehave contributed to the development of color names. Rob-erson, a psychologist (who has presented her findings also inRochester last year) and her co-workers report on replica-tion attempts in Papua, New Guinea, and conclude thatcultural influences are strongest. In his comments Hensel-mans, a philosopher turned computer programmer, attacksthe Munsell color chart used in the World Color Survey asconstraining the investigation unduly. Why? Because itsupposedly imposes an unnatural color language invented inthe West on the unsuspecting natives. According to thisview such a chart cannot be seen as an assembly of paintedpapers creating in natural daylight various color experiencesbut must be regarded as a cultural artifact that has nothingto do with natural color experiences. Color terms are alsothe subject of the essay by Dedrick and his respondentCostall. Cognitive psychologist, Gellatly, recounts exam-ples from the literature that indicate the largely culturalbackground of color words. In her comments Saundersattempts to get rid of the small influence of biology thatGellatly grants as a possibility.

In his essay “Contrast colors: a powerful and disturbingphenomenon” psychologist Whittle describes a video screenexperiment showing the distinctive effect of surround onfield colors. He contrasts such effects (bearing little rela-tionship to experiencing colors in nature) with the tendencyof natural objects to maintain their apparent color indepen-dent of illumination quality. The appearance of strong con-trast requires a certain artificiality of viewing, well known toimpressionist painters (viewing surroundings through a


frame). Whittle attacks the conventional notion that per-ceived color is equal to physical “color.” His respondentHeelan extends this view of parsings with multiple results tospatial vision using the Mueller-Lyer illusion.

Mausfeld discusses “Attributes of color and elementaris-tic misconceptions of color representation.” He is a cogni-tive scientist who has offered the term “elementaristic” todescribe the typical color science experiment: viewing sim-ple color fields in minutely controlled surround and illumi-nation conditions in often elaborate unnatural experimentalprotocols. Guilty as charged! Mausfeld does not believe thatsuch decontextualized patches can be seen as buildingblocks of color perception. He attacks the conventionalattributes brightness, hue and saturation as cultural abstrac-tions (a view supported, incidentally, by Burnham et al. intheir book of 19631) and does not think opponent colortheories can be building blocks for developing color at-tributes. He is looking for “representational primitives” asthe right kind of building blocks without offering a proposalat this time. He also addresses the issue of color naming andconcludes that it is likely based on both biology and culture.In his commentary van Brakel agrees with most of whatMausfeld had to say but takes him to task for believing thatbiology might have played at least a part in color namingdevelopment. He offers an extended listing of examplesfrom several cultures in support of a purely cultural devel-opment. The only standardization he sees in color naming isthe current trend of many cultures to align their color wordswith those culturally created in the Anglo-American sphere.

Aristotle’s theory of perception is the subject of theancient philosophy expert Johansen. He concludes thatwhile this theory emphasizes the passivity of senses Aris-totle left some room also for a view of sensory activity. Inher discussion Saunders attacks what she calls “automatoncolor vision” (the result of her interpretation of the activitiesin color science). Her rather romantic view of vision is thatof a “tool [that] handles its objects like hands: it gropes,pokes, grasps, escapes danger and welcomes friends.” In asimilar vein Philosopher Kraml interprets Roger Bacon’sexplanation of the rainbow. He concludes that Bacon sawthe eye not just as a passive object but insisted “the eye hasto meet the incoming species in order to accept them andguide them to the brain.” His respondent Wachelder seesBacon as the forerunner of the technological tradition ofcultural interpretation of scientific findings. Philosopher ofscience Steinle compares Newton’s and Goethe’s color ex-periments. He views Goethe’s contributions as dealing with“color theory” rather than with physics, as Newton’s do. Hisrespondent Derksen, also philosopher of science, investi-gates among others the question if Newton was a theory-driven experimenter while Goethe was an exploratory ex-perimenter. He comes to the conclusion that this is a fairdistinction but that Goethe had bad luck because “not allthat much can be discovered about colors from the purelyphenomenological perspective.”

Philosopher Seppalainen asks the question “Was thereever a physiological opponent color code?” and concludeson logical grounds that there is no one-to-one mapping

between Hering-type perceptual data and opponent codes aspostulated by color science. This is undoubtedly true buthardly news. The reviewer is not aware of a single vision orcolor scientist that claims to know how unique hues aregenerated. His respondent Davidoff agrees and concludesthat opponent process neurophysiology is not relevant toformation of color categories except perhaps in the case ofred and yellow.

In an interesting contribution lecturer in science studies,Johnston attempts to find answers to the question of how, inmodern technology, automated instruments came to replacethe human eye as arbiters of color specification. It is thelengthy story known to color technologists, from photome-ters to computer controlled reflectance spectrophotometers.He blames “three rising fashions of quantification, objec-tivity and automation by physicists and engineers” despiteobjections by psychologists. But he concedes that colormeasurement today is “a technological workhorse. . .. Andwhile the physicalist theory has lost its luster, the machinesthat embody it have more authority today than any pair ofeyes.” This is grist for the mill of his respondent van Brakelwho demonstrates the subjective character of all proposedcolor order systems. While he agrees that color is ‘real,’ hedescribes the color of vision and color scientists as “thesocial-historical outcome of a development trajectory; amutual shaping of philosophical presuppositions, scientifictheories, experimental practices, technological tools andrhetorical frameworks.” There is undoubtedly some truth inthis, but is it the only truth?

In the final contribution, de Weert provides a brief his-torical sketch of the psychophysics and physiology of colorvision. While, for example, in the 1970s color constancywas for Boynton a minor phenomenon it has since beenrecognized by Land and Zeki as having fundamental im-portance. Similarly, assimilation and contrast are no longerseen as annoying side effects. These and other examples arepresented to demonstrate “that the perception of color can-not be considered as an isolated process.” His respondent,philosopher and physicist Decock, uses the transition fromNewtonian to Einsteinian physics as a paradigm for theevolving change from a physicalist view of color to one inwhich there is nothing a priori about color. In particular, heconcludes “phenomenal color space” is not a space. Hethinks that line element spaces may be “the clearest pro-posal for a phenomenal color space.” He also questions theattribution of metric values to distances between colors inmultidimensional scaling because these distances “cannotbe claimed to represent anything.”

It seems to the reviewer that the basic shortcoming mostof the authors attribute to color science is that it has notexplained the working of consciousness. Of course thischarge can be leveled against anybody and any other sci-entific or philosophical community. All our theories andfacts are based on suppositions, even those of anthropolog-ical and historical perspectives. There are no absolute truthsanywhere that we have been able to grasp. While many ofSaunders and van Brakel’s arguments are true in a funda-mental and absolutist way they shed little or no light on


what color science should be doing differently. The sim-plistic physicalist view of color of the mid-20th century hasalready given way to a more sophisticated view as recentwritings by many vision and color scientists show. Unlessone is a dualist it is difficult to escape the conclusion thatcolor perceptions are somehow generated by activities ofthe brain. Pursuing these avenues seems to be a legitimateactivity. It remains to be seen if most of the phenomenaidentified in elementaristic experimentation will not also befound in new kinds of experiments involving natural view-ing situations. In general, tearing down is always easier thanbuilding up. But to see how one is viewed from a differentperspective can be an enlightening experience.

ROLF KUEHNI


1. Burnham RW, Haines RM and Bartleson CJ. Color: a guide to basicfacts and concepts. New York: Wiley 1963.

Colour Image Science—Exploiting Digital Media. Editedby Lindsay W. MacDonald and M. Ronnier Luo. JohnWiley & Sons Ltd. The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chi-chester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, England, 459 pp. $120

Colour Image Science—Exploiting Digital Media is a com-pendium of papers presented at the Colour Image Science2002 Meeting held in Derby, England in April 2002. Thebook’s editors, Lindsay W. MacDonald and M. RonnierLuo, both of the Colour & Imaging Institute of University ofDerby, UK, created a very valuable text and reference bookfor those involved with digital color science and imagereproduction. There are 437 pages and a well-referencedindex and a thorough table of contents. The book covers abroad range of subjects; Color Vision, Multispectral Imag-ing, Image Processing, Gamut Mapping, and, Image Qual-ity. Each chapter includes a number of graphs and illustra-tions that further explain and clarify the subject. This bookwill appeal to color scientists and engineers engaged indelivering color imaging and multimedia products or pro-grams. Graduate and post-doctoral students, research librar-ies, technical directors, and all those who have a burningpassion for our world of color would also benefit with acopy in their bookcase.

The book is divided into five parts. Part 1—ColourVision (76 pages) contains chapters on Perception of Trans-parency, Investigation of Colour Memory, and Perceptionof Colour Differences in Large Printed Images. The under-standing of our human visual system is that it is trichro-matic, that is, it has three channels of information used forcollection and transmission. Trichromacy by definitionstates that it is sufficient for good color reproduction. Asadvances in vision science unfold and knowledge abouthuman visual performance is gained in addition to theincrease in the understanding our human color visual systemwe begin to understand how to reproduce color. Part

2—Multi Spectral Imaging (72 pages) contains chapterson Evaluation of Multispectral Imaging, Spectral ColourStatistics of Surfaces, A Generalized Method for SpectralScanner Characterization, and Webcam for Interactive Mul-tispectral Measurements. After reading this chapter it isexciting to see the future of data storage, accurate simula-tion of color appearance and a more accurate way for colorreproduction enfold before our eyes. Part 3—Image Pro-cessing (79 pages) contains chapters on Spotting Colours,Colour Contrast on Adjacent Image Regions, Indexing andretrieval in Colour Imaging Databases, and A Spatial GamutCalculation to Optimize Colour Appearance. This chapterincludes the latest research in color appearance modeling.What is exciting here is the inclusion of spatial vision incolor appearance modeling. This will be the future of colorappearance modeling. Part 4 - Gamut Mapping (116pages) contains chapters on How different are Colour Gam-ut’s to Cross-media Colour Reproduction? Gamut Compres-sion Algorithms Based on Experimental Observer Data, ATopographic Gamut Mapping Algorithm, Gamut Mappingfor High Quality Print Reproduction and Gamut MappingAlong Curved Lines. Gamut mapping is the process ofadjusting the colors of a source gamut to the color gamut ofa destination device particularly when the respective gamutsare not similar. Different mapping schemes or algorithmsare designed for different purpose and achieve differentresults. Part 5—Image Quality (80 pages) contains chap-ters on Modeling Colour Appearance, Spatial Vision andImage Quality, Metric Approaches to Image Quality, ImageQuality and Colour Characterization, and How to MakePictures and Please People. This chapter ties the wholeconference together from color vision to image quality.Contextually placing technology and concepts previouslypresented to make images pleasing. The overview high-lights current technological problems and issues, andmore importantly, points a direction to a path forward fortomorrow.

There are 12 full-color plates in the book each onehelping to illustrate the results or proof of concept. The onethat I found most interesting was Plate 8 found on page 304.There are six graphs one for red, yellow, green, cyan, blueand magenta. These graphs diagrammatically show the cor-responding changes in the J/C (lightness/chroma) plane as aresult of applying a gamut mapping (compression) algo-rithm. Plate 8, located in the center of the book, shows thegraphical representation in full color. Each of the twelveplates colorfully represents a concept.

The technical material in each of the chapters is the lateststate-of-the-art information. There are at least three chaptersor papers within every topic or part. Each chapter is wellwritten by a notable author in their respected field. Whatmakes this compendium relevant are the topics, the currencyof the topics, the development of the topical subject matter,and the experiment and experimental results designed tovalidate the initial premise. Each chapter concludes with aparagraph that summarizes the current technology or knowl-edge, and provides a brief glimpse into the future. All thearticles are well referenced citing previous works. For in-


stance, Lindsay, et al, in their paper, A TopographicalGamut Mapping Algorithm, took the first step in developingan algorithm that transforms values from a source gamut toa destination gamut that preserves the source-destinationrelationship in a reversible manner.

The obvious competition for this book is the proceedingsfrom the IS&T Color Imaging Conference in Scottsdale, AZ. Ibriefly reviewed the 2001 proceedings. By contrasting theDerby and the IS&T conference one may be able to see thecolorful differences between the proceedings. The Derby con-ference focuses on gamut mapping while the IS&T conferencedelivers a section with a large number of shorter varied sub-jects in their “Interactive Session.” Both proceedings containample graphs and tables to further explain and supplement the

accompanying text. Derby has 12 full color plates, IS&T has 2.Derby has 437 pages, IS&T has 355. Surveying the contentand comparing them, both books are excellent with a minimumof overlapping materials.

Colour Image Science—Exploiting Digital Media is anexcellent book to have on ones bookshelf. Color imagingscience is growing rapidly and reference works such as thishelp us to understand the issues, challenges and opportuni-ties in cross media reproduction.

JACK A. LADSON



bright earth: art and the invention of color

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