University of Waterloo: Computer scientists paint a picture of six decades of movies. “From the sepia tones of a Coen brothers film set in the Depression-era Dust Bowl to a child’s red coat in Schindler’s List, filmmakers have long known the power of colour in movies. Now, computer scientists have analyzed 60 years of films to paint a picture of the past six decades in film.”
Ars Technica: Pantone wants $15/month for the privilege of using its colors in Photoshop. “If you want to use up-to-date versions of Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps, you’ve already been paying subscription fees for years now. And if you want to use Pantone colors inside of Adobe’s apps, it’s about to get even more expensive. Starting this month, the Pantone color books in Adobe’s apps are mostly going away, and continuing to use those colors in your files will require a new Pantone Connect extension.”
News@Northeastern: Machine Vision Breakthrough: This Device Can See ‘Millions Of Colors’. “An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Northeastern have built a device that can recognize ‘millions of colors’ using new artificial intelligence techniques—a massive step, they say, in the field of machine vision, a highly specialized space with broad applications for a range of technologies.”
Los Alamos National Laboratory: Math error: A new study overturns 100-year-old understanding of color perception. “A paradigm shift away from the 3D mathematical description developed by Schrödinger and others to describe how we see color could yield more vibrant computer displays, TVs, printed materials, textiles and more.”
PsyPost: Colorful urban environments promote wellbeing, even if they are just in virtual reality. “A new study in Frontiers in Virtual Reality tested the effects of vegetation and colorful patterns in an urban environment. Employing virtual reality, the study found that green vegetation caused volunteers to walk more slowly, while also increasing their heartrate, indicating a pleasurable experience. Meanwhile, colorful patterns increased alertness, fascination and curiosity.”
Ars Technica: Picasso‘s favorite pigment may one day recycle metals from your cell phone. “Gold and certain other precious metals are key ingredients in computer chips, including those used in consumer electronics such as smart phones. But it can be difficult to recover and recycle those metals from electronic waste. Japanese researchers have found that a pigment widely used by artists called Prussian blue can extract gold and platinum-group metals from e-waste much more efficiently than conventional bio-based absorbents, according to a recent paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.”
Fast Company: This new AI-powered paint tool helps you create custom colors with your voice. “If an architect wanted to create a building that matched the color of a New York City summer sunset, they’d have to pore over potentially hundreds of color cards designed for industry to get anything close, and still it’d be a tall order to find that exact match. But a new AI-powered, voice-controlled tool from Sherwin-Williams aims to change that. The paint brand recently launched Speaking in Color, a tool that allows users to tell it about certain places, objects, or shades in order to arrive at that perfect color.”
University of Delaware: Arsenic And Old Books. “Emerald green, sometimes called Paris green or Schweinfurt green, is a pigment containing copper acetoarsenite, and its use in America and England during the Victorian era is well documented. Given the toxic elements’ ubiquity in everyday objects, some library conservationists wondered if Victorian bookcloth could also contain poisons, but they lacked the resources and equipment to test for toxic elements…. For help, they turned to UD’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources’ Soil Testing Program.”
Daily Beast: We’re a Big Step Closer to Full Color Night Vision. “In a new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, researchers at the University of California, Irvine used machine learning to transform what you see through a night vision scope or camera into a veritable rainbow of colors. This game-changing development could benefit not just the military, but also medical technologies, healthcare, and even more niche tasks like art restoration.”
NARA Institute of Science and Technology: New approach to scanning objects of illumination. “Scientists from Nara Institute of Science and Technology created a new approach to compensate for variations in illumination while scanning cathedral stained-glass windows. This work may be applied to other objects of cultural significance to help capture their colors in the most lifelike way.”
PetaPixel: This Web App Can Use One Photo’s Colors to Grade Another. “Image Color Transfer is a free, browser-based application that allows a photo to be color graded to match the color of another photo, similar to the ‘Match Color’ feature found in standalone photo editing applications.”
KnowTechie: Green message bubbles on Apple devices are turning teens away from Android. “Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal released an article looking offering some insight into why young people want to stay away from the dreaded green text bubble on iMessage. Apparently, today’s peer pressure leads young people to prefer Apple devices so they can have that sweet, blue text bubble.”
New York Times: Office Attire That Makes a Statement: ‘OK, Let’s Hug’. “Crisis breeds innovation, and the difficulties of conducting in-person business during the pandemic have exposed office workers to a tactic once reserved mostly for camp counselors, or bosses with capture the flag captain energy: color coding. Employers who want workers to come back to their desks are trying to accommodate different degrees of Covid risk tolerance. One approach they’ve landed on is offering people accessories — wristbands or pins — that signal their preferences for social distancing, masking and shaking hands.”
Architectural Digest: Katy Perry Has a Genius New Way to Help You Pick Your Paint Color. “Choosing a paint color the old-fashioned way is notoriously daunting—staring at a huge wall of paint chips can quickly go from exciting to exhausting. But Katy Perry—in collaboration with Behr Paint and Spotify—has just launched a new tool that just might eliminate the fatigue. Called Music in Color, it’s an inventive website that allows you to input a song of your choice and receive a color recommendation based on that song.”
Fox 16: Why the 9/11 Museum & Memorial uses ‘sky blue’ in its tributes. “In recent years, the 9/11 Museum & Memorial has encouraged buildings across New York City to light up their rooftops or facades in remembrance of those who were killed during the attacks on September 11. Specifically, the city’s iconic buildings will be illuminated in a striking sky blue — a color that holds special significance for the organization, and the city as a whole.”
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