Details

Snapshot 1: Best-concentrated red response (colored) and for comparison (gray). The colored curve has a much smaller side lobe.

Snapshot 2: Best-concentrated red response (colored) and the best-concentrated red response without a side lobe (gray). The red-sensitive cones in the human eye have a spectral response similar to the gray curve.

Snapshot 3: Best-concentrated green response (colored) and for comparison (gray).

Snapshot 4: Best-concentrated blue response (colored) and for comparison (gray). Since the two response curves differ only very little, only a small portion of the full display area is shown.

Among the positive functions of the form , there are members that show a stronger concentration toward a dominant wavelength than can be seen in the original functions , , . Surprisingly, there is a well-defined triplet of best-concentrated functions. Their points all belong to the boundary of the convex line-free area and are placed such that they form a triangle of maximal area. The particular geometry of the line-free area makes it easy to find these points: Two points are given as the two edges of the area and the third point is determined by having maximum distance from the connecting line between the two edges. If one poses the condition that each curve should have a single maximum, one has to choose the third point differently and finds that the area is 71% of the maximum area. Taking into account shot noise in the color channels of electronic cameras, one arrives at the conclusion that the number of distinguishable signal triplets is proportional to the triangle area [2].

References

1. M. L. Pearson and J. A. C. Yule, "Transformations of Color Mixture Functions without Negative Portions," Journal of Color & Appearance, II(I), 1973.

2. U. Mutze, General Properties of Metamerism Preserving Color Imaging Systems, Kodak Technical Report, Hybrid Imaging Research Laboratories Europe, Accession No. 278861D 02/16/1993, unpublished.