Virtually everything has color, shape and texture - the bases of the formative arts. The high-quality, high-definition color television sought by the mass media promises to open a whole new era of enhanced sensations. This is the latest stage of an evolutionary process, a qualitative development from audio information of radio through the black-and white shapes of primitive television to video information of modern televisions, adding color to shape. The process has brought us to information-rich age in which shape and color information is being complemented by improvements in the quality of information, rendering textures.
Everywhere, we are surrounded by color. From the furthest reaches of space to the depths of the sea, there is nothing without color, and it is surely vital that we should see and perceive colors accurately. Yet, the Japanese saying “ten people, ten colors” suggests that we may all see the same color differently. Our color sense is affected by our emotions, so that ten people may indeed see the same color in ten different ways. How, then, can we can convey accurately to others our color perceptions? The “red” I have in mind may not be the same as that in yours. And this dilemma is by no means limited to color perceptions. When we include the texture of the object we see, the problem of conveying this impression are even more difficult. To convey colors accurately to anyone, at any time, we need to express colors using a painstaking means of standardization that covers each and every condition.