Category: Color

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Color Innovative Technology VRC

Adobe Kuler

Adobe Kuler is an iPhone app that allows you to create a themed color palette based on photos taken with an iPhone camera or from imported photos from the web (the app provides you with a Google Images search option, which is convenient). As soon as you show the Kuler app an image, it starts capturing colors from the image and creates a customizable color theme. You can also create themes manually using the color wheel and standard color rules—analogous, monochromatic, triad, complementary). The themes are editable, and you can sync them with your Adobe account and the Creative Cloud and can be used for design purposes—it works especially well with Adobe Illustrator.

For more information about the Kuler app, visit the web version‘s color wheel or the app. We have the app installed on the VRC’s iPad, so feel free to come check it out!

The image examples are left: my desk in the VRC and right: Sandy Skoglund’s Revenge of the Goldfish (1981).

Via Wired

Categories
Color Innovative Technology

Visualizing Ambient Music with the Scape iPad App

Need a relaxing, ambient break from your studies? Check out Brian Eno’s latest invention, the Scape app for iPad:

[The Scape app] lets users pull together a variety of shapes, backgrounds, and color schemes – each with its own corresponding musical cues —to create their own visual and sonic landscape. There are no proxies to any sort of traditional music creation tools; everything is based on the abstract imagery and the sounds each visual creates.

The app is $5.99 in the iTunes store. Click here for a video demonstration.

Categories
Color Innovative Technology

Color Uncovered: Free App for iPad

Color Uncovered is a free app for iPad that explores various aspects of color:

How is Monet like a honeybee? What color is a whisper? Why is it so hard to find your car in a lamp-lit parking lot?

Color Uncovered features a wide spectrum of cool color-related topics to explore. Learn why friends shouldn’t let men buy bananas. Try your own color experiments on the iPad using simple items you have at home: a CD case, a drop of water, and a piece of paper. Discover how the iPad and other devices create color. Find out what causes afterimages—and more.

For more information, view the Exploratorium website.

Categories
Color Image Quality News VRC

VRC Workshop at the CTL – Register Now!

Reminder! The Visual Resources Center has partnered with the Center for Teaching and Learning to offer the following workshop:

Visual Literacy in the Classroom: How to Find, Create, and Display Images

Friday, November 18, 10:30AM – 12:00 PM

Gates-Blake 133

Images in the classroom go beyond Google and PowerPoint: students are expected to be visually literate (according to the Association of College and Research Libraries, “able to find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media”). This 90-minute session offers an introduction to the Visual Resources Center and a starting place for instructors seeking quality images for teaching in a visually literate classroom. The session will also cover techniques to engage students with image resources. Graduate instructors and Post-Docs are encouraged to attend.

Registration is Required. Please Register in advance for the session by clicking here.

Categories
Color

See the Average Color of the NYC Sky

The website NSKYC updates every 5 minutes with the new average color of the NYC sky. (Washington D.C. is also available).

Contact the site’s creator, Mike Bodge, to add your city (must have access to webcam, Internet, and excellent view).

Categories
Color Images on the Web

Google Scans Kepler, Galileo and Nostradamus in Color

Works from the 16th and 17th centuries by Kepler, Galileo and Nostradamus have been digitally reformatted and are available in color via Google Books. Traditionally, such manuscripts have been scanned in black-and-white; Google’s color scans allow for a more accurate experience of the originals.

Some of the foundational texts now available in color include Nostradamus’ Prognostication nouvelle et prediction portenteuse (1554), Johannes Kepler’s Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae from 1635, and Galileo’s Systema cosmicum from 1641. All texts can be viewed online, or downloaded as a PDF (although the PDF’s lack color)…

Via Open Culture.

Categories
Color Photography

Happy 150th Birthday, Color Photography!

This week the color photograph celebrates its 150th birthday. On May 17, 1861, Scottish physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell and photographer Thomas Sutton (inventor of the SLR camera) shot a photograph of a colored ribbon using red, green, and blue filters.

Via BBC News.

Categories
Color Image Quality Presentation Tech Support

Optimal Mac Settings for Projection in CWAC

Have you had trouble getting presentations to look good in CWAC classrooms? Are images too dark, or the wrong size? The following tips will solve most projection problems and work best for MacBook Pros. Knowing how to adjust your resolution, mirroring and color profile will help you when presenting outside of CWAC, too, since every projector is a little different.

Please Note: In CWAC, we recommend turning off at least the first two rows of lights closest to the screen for maximum color accuracy and brightness.

We now have VGA and HDMI connections (with adapters for Mac!) You might consider trying HDMI for the best color and clarity.

First, select System Preferences from the Apple menu at the top left of your Finder toolbar. Then click on Displays.

When this window opens, you can check “Show displays in menu bar” if you would like a shortcut to Displays in your Finder menu. Next, adjust your ExtronScalerA (Projector) resolution. We recommend 1900 x 1080 (or as high as your monitor will allow) at 60 Hz.

Now adjust your Color LCD (Laptop) resolution to 1440 x 900.

Go back to the VGA Display window and select the Arrangement tab. Check or uncheck the box as you prefer (if you would like to project exactly what is on your laptop screen, check Mirror Displays. If you would like to show a Powerpoint presentation with presenter notes, or drag only one window to the projector screen at a time, uncheck this box).

Finally, click on the Color tab. Switch profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1. This should correct images that are appearing dark or muddled. If sRGB IEC61966-2.1 is not showing up on your list, be sure that the box “Show profiles for this display only” is NOT checked.

For a MacBook, settings are the same as above except the Color LCD (Laptop) resolution should be set at 1280 x 800.

Click here to read more about this topic. If you have trouble setting up a different kind of laptop, or if you have any questions, please contact the VRC or AV Services.

Categories
Color Innovative Technology Software

A Color App for the iPhone

The mobile application colorID, by Winfield & Co. LLC (and available for download from iTunes for $1.99), is a color recognition tool that allows users to capture, identify, and share colors on the go. A recent blog post by Austin Seraphin highlights a profound use of this application: used in conjunction with the iPhone’s standard VoiceOver screen reader and iPhone camera, colorID speaks the names of colors. This allows visually impaired users to hear a narrative of color as they experience it. Below is an excerpt from Seraphin’s blog; find the entire post here. Read more about accessible applications here.

The next day, I went outside. I looked at the sky. I heard colors such as “Horizon,” “Outer Space,” and many shades of blue and gray. I used color queues to find my pumpkin plants, by looking for the green among the brown and stone… I then found the brown shed, and returned to the gray house. My mind felt blown. I watched the sun set, listening to the colors change as the sky darkened. The next night, I had a conversation with Mom about how the sky looked bluer tonight. Since I can see some light and color, I think hearing the color names can help nudge my perception, and enhance my visual experience.

Categories
Color Images on the Web Photography

Early Twentieth Century Russia, in Color

Between 1909 and 1912, “photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time – when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun.”

These images are now owned by the Library of Congress, which acquired the glass plates in 1948. Digital reproductions are available online.

Via Boston.com’s Big Picture photography blog.