Seeing Color | Outside The Lines

3a Crisp Imagery through Color Enhancing Technology When you look at an image, it is safe to assume that you are seeing it through three color sensors: green, blue, and red. Can you imagine seeing an image through 12 times the amount of sensors?

The University of Granada in Spain and Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy, recently unveiled design plans for a “multispectral imaging system capable of obtaining information from a total of 36 colour channels.”

The Polytechnic University of Milan is responsible for creating the sensors, known as Transverse Field Detectors (TFD). These sensors “…are capable of extracting the full colour information from each pixel in the image without the need for a layer of colour filter on them.” The Color Imaging Lab at the University of Granada has created a system that enhances these sensors and puts all 36 color channels to good use.

While this technology will be available to medical and government industries at first, there is a good chance it will someday transform the images we see on our mobile devices and personal computers.

The digital devices we use every day currently have color image sensors limited to the basic three color channels. As you can imagine, this impacts how we perceive color and lessens the quality of the images we see. If our handheld devices and personal computers offer 36 color channels someday, the colors we see onscreen will appear true to life.

Before this technology makes it into our homes it will be used for important activities that depend on poignant but stubborn details, like medical imaging and detecting counterfeit currency.

For now the technology is making it easy to facilitate the “capture of multispectral images in real time.” According to Wikipedia, “A multispectral image is one that captures image data at specific frequencies across the electromagnetic spectrum. The wavelengths may be separated by filters or by the use of instruments that are sensitive to particular wavelengths, including light from frequencies beyond the visible light range, such as infrared.”

The Principal Investigator on this project is thrilled about the potential TFD technology has to “…turn the light they receive into electric signals.” He believes that this technology will aid and advance a variety of industries and research fields.

Even though the technology is young, trials of the Transverse Field Detectors are taking place in locations like the USA.

Learn more about the research that is leading the way to crisper imagery through color enhancing technology:

Imaging Resource

University of Granada

Read more Segmation blog posts about art and color:

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For many people, being colorblind is a way of life. There are no magic pills to take or corrective surgeries to explore. Once the diagnosis is reached, it is highly unlikely that a person will ever see beyond his or her dingy view of the world.

Unless he or she has the help of new age corrective lenses by EnChroma®, seeing color is near impossible.

Prescription glasses have been correcting eye problems for years. Now, Digital Color Boost^TM technology is making up for what colorblind people lack. The journey to discover these compensatory lenses began about one decade ago. Scientists at Enchroma, the company that owns and distributes the Digital Color Boost sunglasses, were given grant money to find an optical solution to the age-old problem of colorblindness.

Scientist found that “…by filtering wavelengths of light, the color signal sent to the brain could be amplified.” Filtration is provided by the Digital Color Boost coating, which is sometimes put onto lenses 100 layers thick. From there, cuts are strategically made in the spectrum to manipulate incoming wavelengths. This allows some photons to pass through the lenses while others are blocked, which in turn introduces color to the colorblind.

The science and technology goes far beyond the scope of common thought, but EnChroma makes it easy to digest in the “How it Works” section on their website (http://enchroma.com/technology/how-it-works/).

Beyond the technology, the packaging of EnChroma sunglasses and the public’s reception of the product is anything but confusing. People are crazy about this product and how it remedies a problem that, for so long, people accepted as, “the way it is.”

Playwright Kelly Kittell told BoingBoing.net, “The first time I saw brick red I was so overwhelmed I stopped cold. Purple and lavender, where have you been all my life?” Lives are changing thanks to the new technology that is introducing them to a world of color.

Kittell goes onto admit that it is distracting to use the glasses at first. “You won’t be able to stop yourself from peeking under the glasses over and over again to verify your favorite gray sweater is actually a dusty rose. It is.”

His thoughts are confirmed by a young caucasian boy, the demographic who is the most likely to be diagnosed with color blindness. Owen’s mom and dad surprised him with EnChroma sunglasses one day. They recorded his reaction to share with the EnChroma blog. Check out Owen’s reaction as he challenges himself to keep the sunglasses on his face after being shocked by color: http://enchroma.com/call-for-enchroma-videos/.

EnChroma understands exactly what they do for the people whom they serve. Their tag line boasts: Color for the Colorblind. With digital color boost technology, they are doing what has thought of as impossible. They are introducing people with colorblindness to the world of color.

Read more Segmation blog posts about colorful technology:

Color-changing Properties Make Gold Multi-purposeful

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