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Spectrophotometer Analysis of Crayons
Volhav writes "Like many as a child, the photographer Mark Meyer wondered what the difference between Yellow-Green and Green-Yellow was in that Crayola box of crayons. Using a monitor calibration tool and the Argyll 3rd party software he evaluated a box of 24 Crayola crayons, and plotted them out with sRGB values. He even included a nice printable poster size version of the chart in his blog post. For the geek or curious this was a pretty interesting plot."
He's also on twitter: @markmeyerphoto
Just in case you want to say hi.
(Always pimpin' my fellow Alaskans)
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
Thanks for catching the typo!
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
Note that chemists have real recording spectrophotometers, not just monitor calibration gadgets. I spent way too long in my youth, if I recall correctly, classifying iron ore samples using one. Its a fairly elegant technique because accurate ultra wide range light sensors have been old stuff for decades. It seems like I took an entire 200 level quantitative chemical analysis chemistry class where all we did was F around with a spectrophotometer in different ways.
If I recall correctly, the infrared ones were the cats meow before NMR got "cheap" for classifying organic compounds.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Has anyone done a similar plot evaluating the taste of the crayons?
And who pinned these mittens to my jacket?
One step closer to understanding some of the recent legislative changes...
The draft was written .... in crayon.
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
I "work" with color science. We have an X-Rite spectrophotometer just sitting around. Takes an artist's thinking, I suppose.
I ran into a paper a while back where the author captured spectrum of 100s of "natural" objects. Rocks, leaves, skin, etc etc. Made for an interesting chromaticity diagram.
"But there's way too much information to decode the Crayola. You get used to it. I...I don't even see the spectral signature. All I see is blonde, brunette, red-head..."
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Thanks for catching the typo!
So that's twice now you missed the "a box of 24 color box of" error?
Well, you're definitely a Slashdot editor.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Well, what's cool is that the first image in the blog post is a graph of the spectra of each of the crayons.
The enemies of Democracy are
Well then, I feel dumb. FWIW everyone else missed the typo too... if you tag a story typo it makes a jabber bot yell at me so I look harder at the text to find things like that.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
full-color PostScript plotter uses crayons as drawing filiments...
does it exist?
The Admin and the Engineer
"Using a monitor calibration tool and the Argyll 3rd party software he evaluated a box of 24 Crayola crayons..."
... that's our secret recipe, just like Kentucky Fried Chicken (excuse me, KFC) or Coke (excuse me, Coca-Cola (Excuse Me, Coca-Cola Classic)). Now kids can just use it for free on the intertubes?!? And *no* royalties or renewables to parents to renew!!??!!??
But...but
Release the lawyers!! Let the DCMA slaughter begin -- Leave No Chemist Standing!!
(...and someone get me Jackson about that D-M-R + microwavable chip thing he was blathering about again.)
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
A monitor calibration tool is not a spectrophotometer, its a spectroradiometer.
Only the bottom end of the calibration gadgets for monitors use characterised colourimeters. Many of the medium and higher end monitor calibration gadgets are proper spectrophotometers. Typically many of the devices where one device is capable of doing the entire colour workflow from scanner to monitor to printer and compare them to pantone charts are the real deal. The i1 PhotoPro is also roughly 10x the cost of your run of the mill "monitor calibration gadgets" like the i1 Display.
In this case his results even include a lovely spectrum as a result. Sure they don't cost $10k, they don't have a wide compliance for lux, they probably aren't 100% accurate and don't read outside the visible band, but that doesn't not make them real spectrophotometers.
Has anyone done the conversion to sRGB values via CIELAB?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I need that script/hardware :)
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Well then, I feel dumb. FWIW everyone else missed the typo too... if you tag a story typo it makes a jabber bot yell at me so I look harder at the text to find things like that.
Well damn. I was so used to Rob Malda's thick skin :-). If he ever felt dumb, he never told anyone so far as I know. No offense was really intended, just that Slashdot could really use a good copy editor sometimes. It would add that professional touch. I could do this. Typos like that practically leap out at me. I think the brains of most people unconsciously auto-correct things like that "box of" error and they don't easily notice. Mine does that too and the intent of the sentence is quite clear, only I'm aware that such an "auto-correction" took place, if that makes sense.
As far as tags go, that feature is broken for me. When tags first came out, they seemed to work for me. Since then, I have never once applied a tag to a story, refreshed the main page, and then see my tag in place. It appears to add the tag but refreshing the page makes it go *poof*. After a while I gave up. I'm guessing this is something other than a technical problem. I must have pissed in someone's cornflakes at some point (that wouldn't surprise me). I'm not really complaining because this is a free account, though it would be nice to know why.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein