Color Science and Digital Imaging

Book excerpt: This book, written by a leading expert in the field of visual effects (VFX), demystifies the complex subject of color science and how it should be managed from project ideation to completion. Readers will learn not only how things work, their capabilities and limitations, but also the color science that goes along with them, in an accessible and informative manner. Starting in the real world, with an understanding of light and our human perception of it, the book then explores how digital cameras "see" and digitize the scene. From the capture of these images, the author then explores the fundamental concerns of storage, editing, and managing color images, including with OpenColorIO and ACES, the Academy Color Encoding System. Written for professional photographers, cinematographers, VFX, motion graphics and computer graphics artists, editors, and colorists, this book will provide you with knowledge of the upstream and downstream technology of your job that will not only give you a competitive advantage and help you to make better images, but also give you a real-world working knowledge of color science.