Breaking the chromatic redundancy of the human visual system using analog color filters involves several key principles that enhance color discriminability and provide additional qualitative color information. These principles are:
1. Principle: Color Context
Color perception is inherently contextual. Altering the color context of one eye enhances overall color discriminability. This means that the presence of certain colors can alter the perception of other colors. For instance, red appears more vivid against a green background than it does against an orange one. In a monochromatic light environment, vision remains monochromatic despite the ability to identify the light's color.
2. Principle: Color Quality
The less similar the color vision between the two eyes, the more new color information can be perceived. Specifically, making the color vision of one eye more monochromatic can yield higher quality additional color information. By diminishing parts the visible color spectrum in one eye, the remaining colors are perceived with greater distinction when complete binocular summation [1] is employed.
3. Principle: Color Contrast
Increasing the monochromacy of one eye's color vision tends to make the perceived color resemble white, while still retaining its original hue. This phenomenon enhances the perception of the selected color, while it inversly enhances the perception of the other colors. For example, dimming all colors except red will make red appear more luminous. When this effect is combined binocularly with the unaltered eye, red appears more luminous against a reddish-white background, whereas other colors devoid of red appear more saturated when combined with a reddish-black background.
According to these principles, the following insights can be derived:
- Color Context: Colors are perceived relative to their surrounding colors. Altering the context in which a color is viewed changes its perceived contrast, vibrancy (i.e. its perceived hue, saturation and luminance).
- Color Quality: The most significant increase in color dimensionality achieved through analog color filters resembles a form of tetrachromacy; mostly comprising the extremes of the visible spectrum, namely blue-violet and far red. These two ends tend to be more monochrome, resulting in more qualitative highlighting. This expanded perception enhances the overall color experience.
- Color Contrast: The enhanced luminance of, for example, red when other colors are dimmed exemplifies the principle that reducing the color spectrum in one eye creates an increased contrast effect that enriches color perception when both eyes are used together.
These principles illustrate how analog color filters can be used to manipulate and enhance human color vision, offering a deeper understanding of color perception mechanics and potential applications in visual technologies.
[1] Cf. p. 29: https://books.google.de/books?id=cGTz58hxLqEC&dq=Binocular+summation&pg=PA29&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Binocular%20summation&f=false