Digital BW, The Print

Ernst,

From what I have read, our predecessors had only black and white vision and 
rods in their eyes. At some time in our evolutionary history, cones 
developed and a color system was superimposed on top of the original B&W 
system (not in place of). So we have both. In dim light, our color vision 
doesn't work very well, so we see only luminance using the rods, while in 
the light the cones come into action overlaying color info, but the 
luminance measured during the day comes from summing the output of the rods 
and the cones, not just the output of the rods.

A good book that explains all this in relation to the use of color in art 
is:-

'Vision and Art: the Biology of Seeing' by Margaret Livingstone, Professor 
of Neurobiology at Harvard.

One quote: -

"Some aspects of visual perception - such as object recognition, face 
recognition, and of course color perception - depend heavily on color, 
whereas other aspects of vision - such as motion perception, depth 
perception, figure/ground segregation, and receiving positional 
information - are colorblind."

Bob Frost.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ernst Dinkla" <E.Dinkla@...>


There's a much longer history of (artistic) monochrome
representation of the world around us than the one with multi
colors. Say  40.000 years against 4000 years. In no technology
I can recall there has been multi-color first and monochrome
later. So I think it must be baked in our genes meanwhile
despite the fact that we see in colors. ...............................