The “B&W in Color” Fallacy

[Nick Komiya]

The Cosmos of Colors

Let's wrap up by impressing upon you, once again, how preposterous it is to discuss original colors based on black and white photos.

Specific colors are 3-dimensionally defined by light Value, Saturation (Chroma) and Hue.

Let's imagine this 3-dimensional concept as a skyscraper of a "shopping mall" magnitude in girth. The elevator shaft is located vertically in the center.

Having a black and white photo, means you are stuck in this small elevator within this super huge building. You can go up and down this elevator (from one corner to another in your B&W photo), but without having a color photo, you have no idea where to go from there.

The brightness of a certain object in the B&W photo, let's say a Waffenfarbe piping on a uniform, tells you that the original color is, say, somewhere on the 40th floor. However, that is as far as you get, as you do not know which direction to go when the elevator door opens on the 40th floor.

In other words, you are lacking the notion of Hue, which gives you the compass direction of north, east, south and west. Then Saturation (Chroma) represents the distance you have to travel from that central elevator.

Thus whereas a color photo tells you to get off on the 40th floor (Value) and walk Northeast (Hue) for 40 meters (Saturation) to get to the color you seek, a B&W photo keeps you stuck in the elevator at the 40th floor, leaving you with an infinite number of colors of the same brightness to choose from.

This is how to look at the two diagrams below that depict the cosmos of colors.

This thread is now pinned in my master index of reference articles under the "Research Resources" section at the bottom.