Generator
Three lightness scales, seventy years apart
Munsell value, CIELAB's L* and CIECAM16's J against luminance, all rescaled to run 0 to 100. Each is somebody's answer to how evenly spaced lightness steps map onto light. They put the midpoint of the scale at 19.8%, 18.4% and 28.0% of the white's luminance respectively — close enough to be three measurements of one thing, far enough apart to be three measurements rather than one restated twice.
Drawn at its defaults, in appearance modelling.
It reads 2 options and
no others: La, obs.
Called by 2 essays
the blast radius of changing it
Matching and measuring
Colour by catalogue
A colour order system arranges physical samples on a regular lattice so a person can find one and name it. The space it samples is not regular, and everything interesting about such systems is what happens at that mismatch.
Matching and measuringA catalogue is not a vocabulary
A colour order system is a regular lattice, because a person has to be able to find a page. Sorted by what its chips would be called, that lattice comes apart into piles differing by a factor of three — and a fifth of all one-step moves in it change the name.