Colour Science & Perception
what the eye settles, and what it cannot
Generator

Four clocks, and only three of them are in the eye

The time constants a room full of light actually runs on. Two are the neural pools of chromatic adaptation; one is photopigment regeneration, which is chemical and is the slowest thing in the eye; and the fourth is a switched-on luminaire coming up to its working temperature. The lamp is slower than anything the observer has. Every model on this site computes its own settling against a target that is not moving, and in a real room none of them has one.
Four clocks, and only three of them are in the eye. The time constants a room full of light actually runs on. Two are the neural pools of chromatic adaptation; one is photopigment regeneration, which is chemical and is the slowest thing in the eye; and the fourth is a switched-on luminaire coming up to its working temperature. The lamp is slower than anything the observer has. Every model on this site computes its own settling against a target that is not moving, and in a real room none of them has one.

Drawn at its defaults, in the clocks a room runs on. It reads 3 options and no others: show, at, to.

Called by 1 essay

the blast radius of changing it

What light is

The room settles after the eye does

Four clocks run in a room and only three of them are in the observer. The slowest is the lamp, which takes four hundred seconds to reach nine tenths of its colour change — so a minute after the light goes on, when the eye is conventionally said to have settled, most of what is left is the lamp, and three quarters of that could not be adapted away by an observer of any speed.

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