Talk:Munsell color system

Error in diagram description

I didn't correct this because it might involve something of a rewrite, but the diagram showing the 5Y and 5PB colors says "Note that the Munsell Book of Color contains more color samples than this chart for both 5PB and 5Y (particularly bright yellows, up to 5Y 9/20; that is twice as much chroma the 5Y 8/10 square to the left)." My copy of the Munsell Book of Color, bought new in late 2008, only goes up to 5Y 9/4, nowhere near 9/20. The highest chroma 5Y is 5Y 8.5/14. There are no chips of any color over chroma 16 as far as I know. Slinberg (talk) 21:22, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I have implemented this edit to correct the description. Slinberg (talk) 15:29, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Any modern munsell-based tools?

Are there any color pickers in Mac OS X (or elsewhere) that are based on the Munsell system? It seems that most tools are based on a hue wheel which changes luminosity as it goes around, making them much less useful for picking equiluminous color schemes. --jacobolus (t) 23:23, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

There's a Windows Munsell Conversion program from here. I've also found some web-based color pickers, but can't track down my reference for them. Argyriou (talk) 23:37, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

There's also EasyRGB's "Color Harmonies", which tries to pick colors which go together. Argyriou (talk) 22:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

what does it mean that munsell is "deficient by modern standards"

This gets a citation, but no explanation, so I'm tempted to take it out of the article, as it doesn't really inform the reader, and just sounds like trash talk. I have no problem with including such statements, but they need to also explain in what way it is deficient, etc. --jacobolus (t) 01:23, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

But the statement is explained, I cite: "it didn't have the correct hues for cyan and magenta and it didn't recognize these hues as local value peaks so it rendered the color circle of saturated colors as a linear gradient from light to dark".--MWAK 06:32, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Alright, but I have no idea what that means. What is the "color circle of saturated colors"? That term is never defined, and as far as I can tell, the Munsell system doesn't have any such circle. So it needs explaining. As for cyan and magenta, could we perhaps have a picture or description of what the "correct" hues are, and why these are wrong? The criticism given is *very* harsh (systematic errors, empirical data that it's bad, etc., with no citations for that), it doesn't really explain what exactly that means, and it doesn't give any examples of a better system. Also, the cited sources don't really say the same thing as the criticism given in this article. Overall, the paragraph sounds very unprofessional IMO. E.g. what in the world are "modern standards", and what systems live up to them? It would be good if a color theory expert could clearly explain the deficiencies for us. Otherwise, as I said before, I'm tempted to cut those criticisms out, or at least cut out parts that aren't supported by the citations given. --jacobolus (t) 17:50, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

What I can find of those references does not appear to support the strong statements made. The Gerritsen, in particular, appears to be an article advancing his own color theory, while for the other reference, the abstract appears to claim the opposite of what this article claims it says. There probably are valid criticisms to make of the Munsell system, but these references don't seem to be it. Αργυριου (talk) 20:42, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that was my impression as well. That said, there do seem to be some criticisms of the Munsell system's perceptual uniformity (and we have systems like CIE L*a*b*, L*u*v*, and CIECAM as a result). But I am not familiar enough with the field, or these criticisms, to accurately summarize them in this article. So it would be nice to have someone familiar with recent research give a more objective summary. In general, it would be nice to get some more pictures showing Munsell's "color atlas" in three-dimensions, so that readers can understand it. I can try to figure something out on that front. It would also be nice to have a better explanation of color systems before and after Munsell, to show its influence on the field. --jacobolus (t) 21:08, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

deficiency 2

I just tracked down and read the Kuehni (2000) article, and it doesn't say anything particularly relevant to an encyclopedia article about the Munsell system, and it certainly doesn't imply that the system is somehow irrevocably flawed: “The comparison of REN, RERE, and UCS shows thalargely the same group of researchers has struggled over decades to determine the correct chroma scales… This is an apparent indicator of the difficulty in visually scaling differences equally in a quadrant…As a result, we have a degree of visual uncertainty both in the chroma and the hue scales.” is hardly the condemnation implied by the citation. --jacobolus (t) 10:50, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, first of all we must differentiate between the earlier forms of the Munsell system and improved versions. Until the eighties the system certainly was deficient, simply because it was based on the incorrect assumption intensity was continuously increasing from blue to yellow. So the "Blue-Green" was shown darker than Green, although in fact cyan is lighter than green; and "Red-Purple" was shown darker than Red , whereas in fact magenta is lighter than red. But of course this is only true if that cyan or magenta is of an equal saturation with the colours compared — and in the earlier versions it simply wasn't. I can only advise you to read the books by Gerritsen. The Munsell Color Circle is implicit in its space: look at the colour space from above or below and then disregard all but the most saturated colours — et voilá it appears.

I have some problems with these statements: "intensity was continuously increasing from blue to yellow" (As there are many blues and yellows, could you use Munsell notation, maybe? What is this statement saying?), "cyan is lighter than green" (likewise: There are many greens and many cyans) Uhw (talk) 21:33, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

As regards the usefulness as a psychometric reference, I can only concur with the conclusions by the site you yourself linked to http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color7.html#MUNSELL:

As we've seen, the Munsell system contains two significant problems: (1) a variety of discrepancies were found in the perceptual spacing of colors, depending on their location in the color space, and (2) the quantitative difference between colors could only be defined on a single color attribute (lightness, chroma or hue) at a time. These problems were not resolved in the Munsell renotation, and the Munsell system remained an inconvenient and uncertain basis for quantifying perceived color differences on all three colormaking attributes.

Of course for simple matching the system is sufficient. The dangers lie in scientific research. To give but an example: Berlin used the Munsell system in the sixties for his Basic Color Terms. Now it matters a lot whether test subjects see this:

Magenta
Cyan

Or this:

Magenta
Cyan

Probably nobody will feel inclined to connect the latter two nuances with any basic colour term.

I agree my Kuehni reference was problematic. I feel what I stated is logically implied by his work, but for an encyclopedia more direct statements are needed. --MWAK 06:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm really confused. The whole point of Munsell's system is that it doesn't assign any colors to arbitrary names, but instead specifies perceptually uniform hues, values, and chromas based on numerical values. That is, instead of specifying "color terms", its goal is to move us away from a need for color terms, at all. In other words, 5P is not meant to be "Magenta", and 5BG is not meant to be "Cyan". As far as I can tell, hues used by the latest internationally specified color model (CIECAM02) are spaced quite similarly to Munsell hues. Your explanation remains unsatisfactory.

It's true that there are issues with the Munsell system, but they aren't (from anything I've read) at all similar to the claims you put in the article. And regardless, the criticisms must be clearly explained, and well documented to go in Wikipedia. --jacobolus (t) 07:22, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Also note that human vision has been found to be non-Euclidian, so it is not possible for a color system to be completely perceptually uniform in 3 dimensions at once. Which is probably one reason the Munsell system, which does not attempt to define a three-dimensional distance metric, is still used, despite systems like CIELAB and CIELUV which do. You should read [1], and perhaps even scroll up and read that whole page, if you want more details. --jacobolus (t) 07:27, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

deficiency 3

I didn't make myself sufficiently clear; my example was about the old system version; its lack of saturated magenta en cyan made any linguistic research carried out with it flawed. Remember that there are still many researchers working with the old stuff. I know a few of them myself. You might have a point that the Munsell system, in that it doesn't attempt the impossible, might be called superior :o). But the real reason it is still used is, I assume, simply that too much had been invested in it already.--MWAK 13:27, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

It's true. You still haven't made yourself sufficiently clear. You made some reference to "before the 80s", which makes no sense, as the Munsell Book of Color has not changed since the 1940s. I'm really not sure what you mean about lack of saturated cyan or magenta; any color can be fit somewhere in the Munsell color solid. Perhaps cyan or magenta appears brightest at some non-integer Munsell hue? That's the only interpretation I can come up with for your statement. But that still doesn't make much sense to me. Maybe you can give a quotation about the cyan or magenta from a color scientist which would better explain? I also don't understand what you mean about the "incorrect assumption intensity was continuously increasing from blue to yellow." Given that blue and yellow are hues with a wide variety of chromas and values, I can't parse that statement. --jacobolus (t) 13:40, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

When you say "You might have a point that the Munsell system, in that it doesn't attempt the impossible, might be called superior..." I think you are missing that the creation of a color space necessarily involves trade-offs. The Munsell system, as far as I can tell, had until very recently (and maybe still has) the most uniformly spaced colors along independent hue, value, and chroma axes of any color model in widespread use. It never claimed to be perceptually uniform in all dimensions, so you are probably right that other models (like CIELAB) would be better for psychological research into color distance in diagonal directions. But CIELAB has problems of its own, not present in Munsell. So it's a trade-off. --jacobolus (t) 13:51, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Allow me to be more precise. Consider the original Munsell colour solid. First of all we must understand this colour space does not represent — by far — the whole of human colour perception; much was left out as the solid was limited by the range of available pigments at the time. The Munsell solid correctly shows that its most saturated colours, those with the highest shown chroma, are not equal in intensity or value: some are lighter or darker than others. The "value" relationship between its most saturated colours is however not shown in a correct way. The "rim" of the solid, the line of most saturated colours, constantly descends from yellow to green to cyan to blue and then constantly goes up again from blue to magenta to red to yellow. So its saturated green is lighter than its saturated cyan and its saturated red lighter than its saturated magenta. In reality however saturated cyan and magenta are lighter than a red or a green of equal saturation — obviously as being "light secondaries" they are lighter. So in a correct colour space of this kind the rim should go down from yellow to green, then up again from green to cyan and then again down from cyan to blue, making cyan a local value peak. Likewise for magenta. But it doesn't. As the solid doesn't, its most saturated cyan and magenta are too dark (and thus less saturated than the other colours in the rim) and it fails in its intention to show colours of equal chroma equidistant from the axis. Therefore it is deficient.

These deficiencies have been remedied in several ways. The Munsell system has in fact been in a constant process of improvement, showing on the one hand a comendable potential for adaptation — and on the other hand it was far from perfect in the beginning. The development was very intricate and I certainly don't know all the details. A simple method was at first too keep the original colours but "squeeze" the rim in the cyan and magenta sector. This way the chroma is correctly shown but it at once is obvious that the solid doesn't contain a cyan and a magenta as saturated as the other colours. A more sophisticated approach was too make the rim "blunter" allowing the colour space to expand to cover more of the perception range. In the nineties at last an equally saturated magenta was made available for scientific research.--MWAK 06:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, well, in discussing developments after the Munsell system, it would certainly be reasonable to explain this, with citations, and if possible give some diagrams which attempt to show readers more precisely what is meant, as the verbal description is still very imprecise. Such saturated colors are outside the gamut of sRGB, but something could probably be figured out.

Maybe we can also show a diagram of the changing shape of the Munsell solid between Munsell's original conception and the renotations. I'm not sure where such a diagram can be found though. I was under the impression that the colors in the Munsell book of color hadn't changed since the 1940s. Is there some explanation of the subsequent changes available somewhere?

Also, how was it that the 1940s measurements of human perception of value didn't pick up that the colors values were wildly different, as you're stating? It was my impression that Munsell value was pretty close to CIE L*/10, and fairly consistent across chromaticities. Is this wrong, or does L*a*b* also have the same systematic errors w.r.t. magenta/cyan hues? Some of what you're saying still doesn't make sense. What do you mean that an equally saturated magenta was "made available"?

Also, why is it that the Munsell renotation scales are still used for judging color systems w.r.t. (at least) hue and chroma spacing, if they are so inaccurate and deficient? Why is the CIECAM02 model so much closer to Munsell hue/chroma spacing than earlier models? I don't disbelieve you; it just doesn't completely agree with the reading I've done recently. But it's also possible that I am misreading.

Thanks for the clarification though. I think the way forward for this article is to emphasize the unique properties of the Munsell system at its conception, along with its tremendous influence on later systems, and then discuss any deficiencies in that context. --jacobolus (t) 06:57, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

What I said above was very basic, so it was easy for me to give this little analysis. The questions you ask are precisely those needed to be asked, but to answer them in the level of detail and exactness needed I would have to remember much of what I have forgotten and refresh my knowledge of the literature a bit — or really quite a lot to be honest :o). I'll try to find a good reference, but it could take a while.

Some are more easily answered though. The value problem was not that the measurements were wrong or contained systematic errors but that they didn't fit well with the external representation: the solid as represented, as part of a colour metatheory. What they could and probably should have done was to adopt a new solid and colour tree, more on the lines of Gerritsen's colour perception diagrams of the seventies. So they did pick it up; but instead of making a radical break they tweaked. This was partly due to the fact that Munsell already in 1915 was aware of these problems but, lacking exact data and rejecting simplistic rotated colour cube solutions like William Benson's, deliberately opted to conform to conventional notions about constant value change. At the time it was probably the most practical thing to do. Another consideration was no doubt that, having grown into an important commercial system, it was advantageous to maintain as much continuity as possible. Today there is of course a vast range of Munsell products for doing research and this range is no longer limited by its underlying colour model; so colours are available outside the solid, among them a saturated magenta.--MWAK 07:29, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

deficiency 4

Okay, so one thing I still don't quite understand then. Is the whole space that the solid fits in deficient? That is, if the boundaries are pushed outward to reflect new pigment colors, etc. that could not be made at the time, are things fixed? Or is there some other problem with the hue/value/chroma breakdown. And a related question, do CIELAB and CIECAM have these same problems? If not, how do their equal-value slices differ from Munsell's? --jacobolus (t) 09:02, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Again good questions :o). The "deficiency" I talked about can indeed be described as a boundary problem and this would be fixed by expanding the solid or tree. It's good that you refer to pigments: pigment limitations were of course a very important factor. It was very facile of me to talk about the need to show a saturated magenta when in fact no permanent magenta was available. The remaining problems largely are a consequence of the fact that the system is primarily not empirical but a conceptual tool to understand colour space. It has these fixed five "principal colors" that are equally spaced. This is in two ways infelicitous. On the conceptual level it gives the dangerous suggestion to the user that these are somehow "unique hues". On the scientific level the equal spacing means you have to solve the contradiction between having saturated colours as local value peaks or lows at R, Y and G (and their contrasts BG, BP and RP) — which is a must at the conceptual level — and the aim of perceptional uniformity. You can't optimise both (using empirical data) when the spacing is kept equal. CIE 1976 L*a*b*, on the assumption it is empirically correct, can by definition not have either of these problems. For CIECAM this is true also but, being in essence nothing but a glorified colour pyramid, it is of course an imperfect conceptual model of colour space. Its equal value "slices" have a very complex topology. That's why CIE 1976 L*a*b* was created ;o).--MWAK 08:07, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

On the conceptual level it gives the dangerous suggestion to the user that these are somehow "unique hues". – why? I don't understand how it gives this suggestion.

On the scientific level the equal spacing means you have to solve the contradiction between having saturated colours as local value peaks [...] and the aim of perceptional uniformity [...] – Again, I don't understand. It was my impression that the only goal was perceptual uniformity, with no care whether the 5 principal hues have any specific properties. In my understanding, they are just arbitrary hues, and have nothing to do with "local value peaks" or anything else. That is, it was my impression that Munsell's whole idea was to move away from imbuing any particular hues or colors with special names, and instead use a numerical system.

For CIECAM this is true also but, being in essence nothing but a glorified colour pyramid [...] – Um, CIECAM is specified in hue/lightness/chroma coordinates, and its color solid looks roughly like Munsell's, though of course it has all sorts of complications for adaptation and contrast and different illumination, etc. But I don't know where you are getting the idea it is a "color pyramid". The most recent model, CIECAM02, is AFAIK the most empirically accurate color model around right now. --jacobolus (t) 03:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Diagrams

Okay, I added a self-made picture (which took a bit longer than I thought it would). This article still needs lots of work though. --jacobolus (t) 02:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Terminology

Perhaps the alternative terms for chroma (saturation) and value (brightness) should be mentioned here - as well as color spaces HSB and HSV (HSB redirects to HSV in Wiki). Maybe also a link to the HSV article. -- 85.22.11.133

The introductory paragraph says: “value (or lightness), and chroma (roughly saturation)”. Eventually it would be nice to explain the difference between "brightness" and Munsell value (lightness), and between "saturation" and Munsell chroma (colorfulness), because they are related but quite different concepts, and the Munsell versions are vastly more useful (being based on human perception) than the HSV/HSV versions. For the article as it exists now though (that is, without a section discussing the relation between Munsell and other color systems, which I would like to add eventually), I don't think such an addition is needed. --jacobolus (t) 23:08, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Charts as SVG images not tables

I think it would be better to convert the charts to SVG images instead of HTML tables. Currently, it's not possible to print/reprint the images all by themselves or change the resolution. SharkD (talk) 11:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be better to have 25, 50 or 100 cells in the hue table instead of 40. Also, the article doesn't clearly explain what to do when a color coordinate uses a fractional value for hue, such as 2.5GY. SharkD (talk) 04:33, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The tables have the advantage of including the 8-bit sRGB values in-line, and roll-over text with both the munsell name and the sRGB hex. You can get one by itself by going to the appropriate template page, e.g. Template:Munsell-hues. To be honest, I don't think printing these would be particularly useful though, because they show only the colors within the sRGB gamut, and a printout would be therefore limited, and likely also inaccurate. As for the number of hues displayed: these were colors for which there were exact direct measurements made. You can go grab the data yourself. To show 25, 50, or 100 hues would require some interpolation from the collected data (you're welcome to do the math, if you want; I think 40 are fine, personally). Basically, my summary would be: make some SVG images which are more useful than the current tables if you want, and then we can discuss the replacement. (I don't personally think it would have much value; filling in more text would be a far better use of time, in my opinion.) –jacobolus (t) 21:16, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

"To show 25, 50, or 100 hues would require some interpolation from the collected data (you're welcome to do the math, if you want; I think 40 are fine, personally)." You're right, 4 * 10 divisions are better. As for the inline RGB values, these can be gotten just as easily using the color picker in a paint application. Anyone interested in the codes probably has such software installed already. SharkD (talk) 01:49, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

50 is wrong. 40 is how Munsell handles the colors in actual practice. While it is an analog system, the minor hue subdivisions are at 2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10. Those "round numbers" (heh) are the 40 plates in the Munsell Book of Color, and sheets of those hues are in stock at Munsell/XRite (I recently ordered 2.5BG 7/4). They'll make you any color in between if you really have your heart set on 4BG 7.265/3.81, but it'll be custom work. Someone using Munsell as a swatch catalog will probably pick one of these "round" numbers. (Munsell was the first common standard color scheme, so was widely used post-World-War-II as a Pantone book is used today.) Further, Munsell educational materials refer to the 40-hue scheme almost exclusively, because that is what's in the Book of Color and student guides. The system is analog and you could certainly teach on a 50- or 100-hue circle... but it would drive your students crazy when they got in the real world and find their way of thinking is off-interval. Therefore, yes, the Wikipedia page should talk about colors like 2.5BG 7/4 as if that's a typical color, because, it is. It correctly portrays the oddball interval of the scheme, as actually practiced real-world.71.198.81.105 (talk) 09:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

As for changing the resolution: modern Firefox, Opera, and Safari now resize whole pages, and this works just fine for me. Do you have a screenshot of the poor resizing? (Also, you can always just take a screenshot and scale it! :) –jacobolus (t) 21:19, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Professional printing often requires much larger sizes than can be viewed in a browser. SharkD (talk) 01:49, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I somehow missed this before. If you want to print tables of Munsell swatches “professionally”, I’d be glad to help you figure out how. I’d guess that it wouldn’t be especially useful, given that these are swatches designed to fit in the gamut of sRGB. For printing, a different set of swatches should be used. The nice thing about the print would be that you could do quality control by just comparing directly to the Munsell Book of Color. –jacobolus (t) 23:31, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Referenced by

The 2010 Jasper Fforde book Shades of Grey refers to Munsell and colour extensively. In it the Chromatacia is run according to the Rules set down by "Munsell", the strength of your colour vision determines your status in life, and the Prefects that run the various towns and villages are arranged by colour. There are many other references to colour and vision in the book. There is no direct reference to Albert Munsell in the book, but the implication seems fairly obvious. I have no idea whether Albert Munsell also made any observations about society and its rules.

Is it worth adding this as a real-life reference? I'll do this on May 14th 2010 unless there are objections. PaulWay (talk) 22:58, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

No: That would maybe belong on an article about the book; it’s pretty irrelevant to an article about the color system. See WP:ROC and Wikipedia:HTRIV#Connective_trivia –jacobolus (t) 23:55, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

If you want to cite policy, you need to quote what you are talking about. I see nothing that says this can't be included. It's trivia, and must be integrated into the article. It would be far from the first time something has an "in popular media" section, and these have stood up to deletion scrutiny, indicating they are the true consensus absent policy to the contrary. (While a single other page having something does not mean anything, it being widespread does, so don't try to cite that policy.) — trlkly 13:54, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

FIGURE under CHROMA

The caption for the figure of the Munsell chart under "Chroma" runs off the side of the page and is not fully visible. I do not know how to fix it. 128.157.160.13 (talk) 20:36, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Can you make a screenshot of that? I can’t reproduce the problem on any browsers here. –jacobolus (t) 21:54, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Hue Specification Numbers Need Better Explanation

The article says the hues are divided into 10 segments for 5 primary & 5 secondary colors, leading to 100 divisions [10*(5+5)=100], but in practice only 40 are used, a factor of 2.5. But what exactly do these leading number 5's mean ( 5Y, 5PB )? What does a 10Y mean? The text does not seem to explain this well, does anybody know? Ace Frahm (talk) 06:08, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

There are 5 named hues Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, and then 5 intermediate hues YR, GY, BG, PB, RP. Each of these is placed in the center (5) of a numbered interval that goes from 0 to 10. So there are 10 intervals each of width 10. Does that clarify enough for you? –jacobolus (t) 16:57, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

At the end of the Specifying a Color section it has (see swatch). What swatch? Broken link? Dan Bollinger (talk) 12:19, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Possibly erroneous conversion

See talk: Shades of blue #Blue (Munsell). Incnis Mrsi (talk) 05:43, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Removed Part

I removed the following part as it was comment out and did not show up anyway:

Even then, though arguably superior to any other contemporaneous system, it was deficient by modern standards: it didn’t have the correct hues for cyan and magenta and it didn’t recognize these hues as local value peaks so it rendered the color circle of saturated colors as a linear gradient from light to dark. These deficiencies have only been partly remedied. Despite the systematic errors this induces and abundant empirical data that the system cannot be perfectly validated,

It was accompanied by this comment:

The cited sources don't match the statements made, which are not explained adequately. Leaving this criticism in the article gives readers the wrong impression. If this criticism can be better explained, it might be worth adding back to this article. I just read the Kuehni (2000) article, and it doesn't say anything like what is implied here. Also, Gerritsen is apparently advocating his own color theory in his book (according to a comment on the talk page). Maybe someone can find some criticisms of the Munsell system which are more grounded, so we can include them. --jacobolus

Tony Mach (talk) 13:18, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, sounds like a reasonable change. –jacobolus (t) 08:37, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Copyright of charts?

Are we really allowed to create these charts and graphics under open source and copyleft licenses? Isn't the source data copyrighted? SharkD  Talk  07:17, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Munsell's sphere

Possible Munsell sphere. It isn't.

Exterior view

Does anyone have a scan of the inside (vertical cross-section) of Munsell's color sphere and could upload it? I remember seeing one once but can't remember where. I believe it was designed sort of like the image to the right, but need some actual proof. SharkD  Talk  18:18, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

No such thing as a Munsell color sphere. Perhaps you're looking for the color solid, sort of like the one here? or here? Argyriou (talk) 19:39, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking around, I found a much better one. It's in Japanese, so I can't read it, but the picture is excellent. Argyriou (talk) 20:39, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Um... the sphere is talked about in the article. Quote: "Munsell’s color sphere, 1900. Later, Munsell discovered that if hue, value, and chroma were to be kept perceptually uniform, achievable surface colors could not be forced into a regular shape." Take another look. SharkD  Talk  05:34, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

A few views of the sphere can be found here. Munsell drew the exterior lines for latitude and longitude, but not the internal lines. So it's kind of ambiguous if Munsell's sphere matches Runge's sphere or not. SharkD  Talk  16:17, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

After several years, I found the actual internals of Munsell's color sphere in here, which is scanned from the "Atlas of the Munsell Color System" (1915 edition). So the above image I made is false. SharkD  ☎  02:06, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Orientation of Hue

While preparing a document on the topic, I realized rather late that there are two orientations of the color circle. Actually it does not matter for the numeric notation, but it looks quite confusing.

Compare Munsell Hue (Derived) with A Grammar of Color (Original?). Uhw (talk) 21:10, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

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Cylindrical representation

Munsell sphere in Atlas

While it is true the color samples are organized in a cylindrical manner, there is evidence Munsell still held on to the belief that there was some underlying spherical nature to the organization of colors, even in later representations such as the image at right. Even the modern representation (made after Munsell's death) is sort of potato-shaped if you draw a smooth mesh around it, as can be seen in materials provided by the Munsell company on their website. SharkD  ☎  08:09, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Munsell saturation

Please see this discussion. I am not sure how saturation is derived in the Munsell system. ➧datumizer  ☎  00:41, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Greetings, color fans:

Since that brief discussion is archived, I am commenting here.

Munsell color swatches are derived from pigmented inks or paints (not sure which), subtractive colors. The definitions referred to by the CIE of chroma and saturation are meant for colored lights, not pigments. These are the additive colors composed of electromagnetic radiation. Were Munsell's experiments done with pigments or lights or both? The characteristics of each are not identical. I'm confused how definitions for colored lights apply equally to colored pigments.

Thank you for your time, Wordreader (talk) 22:32, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Break down an example

Break down an example like 7.0GY3.29/1.5. How do I parse that in 3 parameter? 12.3.203.132 (talk) 17:58, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

7.0GY means 20% along the way from 5GY (green yellow) to 5G (green). 3.29 then means the value is dark whereas 1.5 means the chroma is very washed-out. But don't calculate an actual sRGB / XYZ / &c. colour value from this unless you know exactly which version of the Munsell system the author of the code was consulting as a reference and you've got actual measured data from that version. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 13:36, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

From what version of the system were the colours in the article taken?

I've just been reading about Munsell's early work, and according to measurements at the time, the greys in Munsell's atlas followed a square curve, so a perceived 50% grey should be at 25% luminance or sRGB 137. This is in close agreement with scans I found online. But this article uses sRGB 124, so about 20% luminance. Since no explicit citation is provided for the diagram, I wonder where these specific tones were taken from.

In my graphics I used the 1943 reannotations available for download from the Munsell website. Dunno, about the body of the article, though. ➧datumizer  ☎  02:52, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you so much, I will investigate. (Note: RIT has reorganised their site; I've updated your link.)

Okay, I've taken a look at the file 1929.dat and there are two things that stand out immediately. 1) The grey values are missing. 2) All the patches with the same value are assigned the same Y – to a precision of 1 in 10⁵.

I have a scientific background and I can tell I'm looking at calculated figures here, not actual measured ones, otherwise there'd be slight differences everywhere. Common sense says that these differences must be visible at the precision given and this can indeed be easily verified by publicly available measurements and scans. Yet the RIT says:

‘1929.dat: back to the source ... These are only those colors physically appearing in the 1929 Munsell Book of Color. These data might be of useful for those interested in the input colors used for the scaling experiments leading to the 1943 renotation. Remember though, these are renotation colors of those original patches, not necessarily the colors of the input data used in the visual experiment.’

I think there can be no reasonable reading of this text that doesn't conclude that the figures in the data file are measured from the original patches. In reality they certainly haven't been and have almost certainly been calculated. I don't know the exact formula / procedure but the figures in the file follow to a good approximation a log₂5 gamma curve; by applying a scaling factor I can also get the points to roughly coincide with the grade 5 polynomial. However the RIT hasn't published the procedure they used, so for all I know they might have gone backwards and rounded the results or something. The Munsell values also obviously aren't renotated, but the original ones.

Bottom line: the RIT is outright lying to us and cannot be trusted as a source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 12:50, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I found a scan done by the Smithsonian of the 1915 edition of the atlas, and its greys appear to lie on a parabola. But I assume that was changed in the 1929 edition after all the work that was done post 1920. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 15:46, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

It's clear from Newhall, Nickerson & Judd 1943 that my assumption was wrong. The 1929 edition used the same[see note below] colours as the 1915 edition. They also mention that it wasn't a printing error: according to the authors the patches in the published book were delivered to Munsell's specification. Instead of recalibrating the scale, making all colours lighter, the grade 5 polynomial (‘quintic parabola’) I mentioned above was ad hoc devised through trial and error to resemble Munsell's parabola for dark and medium tones but then smoothly veer off to 100% reflectivity for light tones. A large scale recalibration wasn't done; all adjustments were local and performed by the committee members themselves. The main problem I see with that approach is that these people likely had a learned notion of what, say, a N⁵ is supposed to look like and that big picture adjustments that might have been needed for an overall visually uniform scale were therefore not going to happen. I would have strongly advocated for a panel of independent observers.

Another problem I see is that they fitted a fifth degree polynomial through 11 points: 9 Munsell patches + 2 extra light ones. The 9 patches already roughly lie on a parabola and probably ‘count’ for maybe three or four points, in which case the fifth degree polynomial is likely overfitted to the scant data. I don't really know why they didn't just use the gamma curve I described above, it goes through all the points well within the likely measurement errors and it's mathematically much nicer to work with. Or they could have used Munsell's parabola and added a carefully tweaked curve on top of it as an offset so it would only affect the lightest colours. Why they thought a high-degree polynomial was a good idea is beyond me and the authors don't explain their decision; maybe things have been discussed in the committee that didn't make it to publication. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 00:10, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Note: It used only roughly the same colours. What I was looking for comparing the graphs was a large scale correction of the sort that Priest, Gibson, & McNicholas seem to suggest in 1920, so all colours being lightened so that 23% would become 25% and so on. This was not done, in fact the dark and middle greys have been darkened a bit, 23% becoming 19% according to Kelly, Gibson & Nickerson 1943. (I didn't spot this in NN&J even though it's an even bigger change in some ways, because I simply wasn't looking for this sort of change and my eye was caught by the unexpected way the curve veers off near white. It also didn't help that NN&J don't really call it out in the text and the graph has no grid lines.) Munsell evidently changed its greys following its JND study.

So the polynomial was designed to match the JND curve, but the rest of my post stands because the JND curve has roughly the same properties (which is why it took until I closely examined the underlying figures in KG&N, which I read only later, before I found out).

As far as I know, the experiment done by Munsell and some of his close employees to create their JND curve wasn't repeated and maybe there would be no point. The validity of the JND method for this purpose was questioned at the time (e.g. Newman 1933) and it has since been found that a) their JND curve doesn't correspond well with other experimental value curves and b) JND curves in general don't make for uniform perception scales.

If all of this is true, that means that NCS of all things arguably has a better value scale than Munsell. I sure didn't expect to find that in this rabbit hole.

The colors in this article are from the 1943 renotations (then passed through a chromatic adaptation transformation to convert to a D65 white point, and converted to sRGB, only including colors in the sRGB gamut). –jacobolus (t) 15:44, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

After all the reading I've done, I was coming to the same conclusion, but thanks for confirming it. I think the References section should contain something like ‘All colours in this article are calculated using [reference to exact paper here] and adapted for the web by [exact procedure here].’ I think this is important for verifiability, because there are several different versions of the Munsell system and our readers should be able to check our work without investing unreasonable amounts of effort. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 16:56, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

The pictures here are just illustrative. If you want something definitive, you can find the color list elsewhere, as well as code for changing between white points, etc. But if you want to see how to do the relevant calculations, take a look at my notebook https://observablehq.com/@jrus/munsell-spin –jacobolus (t) 14:15, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Chroma limits

FTA: ‘Note that there is no intrinsic upper limit to chroma.’

There is though. The limit may not be the same for every hue and value, but if you crank up the chroma far enough you'll bump into the limits of the human visual system. Using after images you might inch just a little outside of the physical gamut, but you will run into a limit at some point. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 13:44, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Cross-reference to Talk:Lightness comment

This is relevant to this article as well: Talk:Lightness#Comment about the V versus Y bit — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.67.227.181 (talk) 00:26, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Applications

It would be nice to have a short section on how/where the system is applied, e.g., soil science, archaeology, food science, house paints, Berlin & Kay's use in ethnography. 2600:6C67:1C00:5F7E:59B2:9CE0:AF45:477 (talk) 15:55, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Sounds great. Go for it! –jacobolus (t) 16:10, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Your revert

@Jacobolus: I think your revert here was flippant. You don't even explain why you don't want a list, and according to MOS:EMBED, it should be. It is much easier to parse as list, and since it is just a list in paragraph form, has no prosaic benefit to keep it in paragraph. And even if you subjectively prefer a paragraph, this is not grounds for a revert, especially of an edit that primarily addresses other improvements as detailed in the edit summary. Whether it should be in this section or a new applications section as suggested in the above discussion (and which I support) is irrelevant to whether it should be a list. Curran919 (talk) 16:06, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Lists in paragraphs are perfectly legible, and are widely used in every kind of written document. Bullet lists are a terrible form which should be avoided whenever prose could handle the same job. In this particular case, there is no benefit whatsoever to turning a paragraph into a bullet list, but it creates visual distraction and disrupts the flow of reading while detaching footnotes from the text they describe. For more, see https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0002QF –jacobolus (t) 18:12, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

So I read your reference. Very interesting, albeit ironically terribly organized, read. My main takeaways from this, in a convenient to parse list, are:

• lists don't belong in narrative writing (agreed)
• lists distill information into fewer words (agree) and that's usually bad (disagree)
• powerpoints lists are bad because they over-distill information (this is stupid, because the whole point of a ppt slide is to summarize the full information that is being spoken)
• lists should be condensed (agree)
• list order matters (agree)
• listing information helps to communicate (doctor example... agreed, and also doesn't fit the writers thesis, weird)
• elements of a list should follow a similar form and be about the same length (agreed), but should avoid bullets where line breaks are sufficient (hard disagree, see WP:PSEUDOLIST)
• top 10 lists are lazy writing (agree)
• lists should be limited to 6 items (overgeneralized, but mostly agree in some contexts)

In the end, the webpage is not an argument against lists, but a haphazard list of things to look out for when making lists. I don't see how it supports your point to not make this a list. The reason none of these things apply to the list I made:

• The elements of the list are not delivered in narrative form. This is a technical article afterall. They are disjointed elements and therefore lose nothing when listed.
• No information was lost, the elements were still in sentence form. They were just line-broken to make them easier to parse, and bulleted to show that they are analogous elements.

Now let me transition to the benefits of putting this in a list:

• blocks/walls of text in technical writing are difficult to read and don't hold attention. They can benefit from some changes in form, which can include diagrams, better paragraph structure and lists. The same problem can exist from an article being list heavy, but that doesn't apply here. source
• it allows readers to more easily scan the content, especially when the list elements are all in the same form. source
• the list form preconditions the reader to understand the relationships between the sentences, that they are analogous, but separate concepts.

Honestly, listifying this was a no-brainer. I was disappointed that MOS doesn't elaborate on this, but I will definitely be following that up. Your aversion to bullet lists as a general concept is irrational. Yes they can be done wrong, but my list hit all the best practices in WP:BULLET and in my sources above. Lists are useful. You have just extracted three quotes from my post and made three different replies, in what seems like an attempt to avoid making them seem like a list, which they clearly would have benefited from being organized as. Curran919 (talk) 10:56, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

This is not a "wall of text in technical writing". It’s a few (not especially great, feel free to rewrite or expand) paragraphs about the history of the Munsell system. Converting one of the paragraphs as a bullet list adds a lot of visual clutter and entirely disrupts the flow of reading for (in my opinion) no benefit. The examples in that paragraph were intended to be just that, a few examples. It is not important in context to highlight each item as a visually salient separate element or focus attention on the list per se; the form of the bullet list here ends up overwhelming the purpose of the content.

As I said, if you want to make a more comprehensive section about example applications with room to grow, put it in a new section. Each of the separate examples can be made into a full paragraph. –jacobolus (t) 14:52, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

primarily addresses other improvements no, it primarily turns a paragraph into a bullet list, with a very misleading edit summary. In general, please don’t do that; a completely empty edit summary is better than one that misstates the change. –jacobolus (t) 18:14, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

I guess which edit is primary is a subjective one, though I think changes to content are much more important to mention than changes to minor formatting that doesn't even change the order of content... but yes, I should have included the list in the edit summary according to the WP:SUMMARYNO and I'll improve that in the future.

If you had reverted the edit specifically to revert the things that were in the edit summary and there was collateral damage of things that were not in the edit summary, then it would have been my fault, but its the opposite. So what was not listed in the description had zero influence on your decision to revert. Curran919 (talk) 11:11, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Adding a couple of wiki-links is an uncontroversial trivial change. Feel free to put those in whenever you want, with or without edit summary, and tag as 'minor edit'. Reformatting the paragraph as a list is a significant stylistic change which disrupts the reading flow, and absolutely should not go unremarked in the edit summary. –jacobolus (t) 14:54, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Whether it should be in this section or a new applications section as suggested in the above discussion (and which I support) is irrelevant to whether it should be a list. – I think I poorly communicated my point. In this section these few examples are much more appropriate as a paragraph. The same topic could be unpacked and greatly expanded into a full section. A bullet list would still not be ideal for that use (though such lists are unfortunately found in many Wikipedia articles); separate examples would instead be given separate paragraphs or even separate sub-sections. –jacobolus (t) 18:46, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

And all that to mention that reverting for good faith edits that you know to go against your subjective taste is very bad form, especially when dealing with someone you know to be editing in good faith after having several conversations with them. See WP:REVERT and WP:RV. Its incitement to an edit war. Rather, let me set an example through my own actions that garner a bit of respect for the other person. When Dicklyon made an edit moving blue cone monochromacy to blue-cone monochromacy, I would have instantly reverted it if it was someone unknown to me with little or unrelated edit history, but as I know him, I started a discussion to ask for a rationale, then later posted evidence that supported a revert, and after waiting for a few days for a response that did not come despite him making other contributions in the interim, carried out the revert. Its just respectful.

Speaking of respect, I'm glad you answered me in this thread. I pinged you over a week ago to tell you I had made an article you requested (Color reproduction) and thought it was weird that you had no interest.

Oh and that color science article... is ONLY lists. Wouldn't that be better in paragraphs as well according to your doctrine? Curran919 (talk) 12:42, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Reverting edits is not a personal attack. People revert my edits on miscellaneous articles all the time. It’s no big deal. -jacobolus (t) 14:56, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree, the color science article is a stub with no narrative whatsoever and little meaningful content. It would be much better to have paragraphs of text instead of a few lists. I hope both color science and color reproduction (thanks for creating this) can eventually be expanded from stubs into more complete articles. –jacobolus (t) 14:57, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I started a discussion to ask for a rationale, then later posted evidence that supported a revert, and after waiting for a few days for a response that did not come despite him making other contributions in the interim, carried out the revert. Its just respectful. – For what it’s worth, I am sure Dicklyon wouldn’t be offended if you revert when you think it’s appropriate. It is possible to have good-faith edits followed by good-faith reverts, without any need for ceremony. If there’s a dispute, someone will start a discussion. -jacobolus (t) 15:18, 19 November 2022 (UTC)