ChromaDepth® Palettes for CyberHologramsTM and C3DTM Images:  In ChromaDepth® CyberHolographyTM the third dimension of depth is encoded into an image by color. The color-to-depth assignment used, the ChromaDepth® palette, depends on the choice background color. The most commonly used ChromaDepth® palette is RGB on Black. This palette most closely mimics the coloring of natural scenes; foreground elements are colored red, background elements are colored blue, and the spaces in-between are colored according to a rainbow spectrum from red to blue.
The colors of intermediate depth positions are created by blends of green with red (creating orange, yellow, yellow green, and green as the red value is reduced and the green value increased) and by blends of blue with green (creating blue-green, cyan, and various blue hues). The key is that adding green to either red or blue moves the color towards middleground, according to proportion of green in the mixture. Green is thus the middleground anchor that manipulates the depth of the color mixture. Red and blue are not mixed with each other because they separate into distinct color planes when viewed with ChromaDepth® Glasses. We have created an RGB on Black palette image that you can import into your favorite graphics software. You can then pick your colors with your software's eyedropper tool or create a palette directly from the image.
The color assignment formulas which relate depth to the values of red, green, and blue are not linear. For the actual functions for calculating the right colors, go to our Color Lookup Functions page. If you want to calculate color values by spreadsheet, download our MicroSoft Works Color Value Calculation Spreadsheet.
  The inverse of the RGB on Black palette also works, with the complimentary subtractive colors replacing the three primary additive colors (cyan replaces red, magenta replaces green, and yellow replaces blue on a white background). This is called the CMY on White palette, and it is the one used with crayons (see our Crayon CyberHologramTM page for examples). You can easily create CMY on White images by first creating an RGB on Black image and then passing it through a color 'invert' filter in a graphics program. Our CMY on White palette image was created this way.  There is one other effective color palette that we are aware of. In this palette, called the RWB on Black palette (Red-White-Blue; the Patriot Model!), white replaces green as the middle-ground anchor color. Adding white to either red or blue moves that color toward the middle-ground. (Artists call this creating a tint of a color, the more white that is added the lighter the tint.) In this palette, as in the RGB on Black color palette, pure red is maximum foreground and pure blue is maximum background. As white is added to red it moves it back towards middle-ground. As white is added to blue it moves it forward to middle- ground. This kind of coloring is often seen in commercial art. A recent poster of the Batman and Robin movie character 'Mr. Freeze' shows the blue-to-white part of this color palette to great effect, entirely by accident.
 An image created using the Patriot Model can be converted to a Cyan-Black-Yellow on White palette by passing it through a color 'invert' filter, but this does not create an effective color palette!
There may be other color palettes yet to be discovered. Please let us know if you find any! |
