Color Filters
Rods and cones can be thought of as filters
- Cones detect red, green or blue parts of spectrum
- Rods detect average intensity across spectrum
To get the output of a filter
- Multiply its response curve by the spectrum, integrate over all wavelengths
A physical spectrum is a complex function of wavelength
- But what we see can be described by just 3 numbers—the color filter outputs
- How can we encode a whole function with just 3 numbers?
- A: we can’t! We can’t distinguish certain colors--metamers