Munsell Color Science Laboratory (MCSL) is one of the world's premier academic laboratories dedicated to the science of color. Our activities include education and research in areas of color perception, color measurement, color formulation, and color reproduction. With our close ties to industry, we concentrate on practical education and applied research. Some of the concepts that are addressed in the research being performed within MCSL are:

Chromatic Adaptation is the ability of the human visual system to compensate for changes in the prevailing color of the viewing environment. For instance when you look through a pair of yellow tinted sunglasses, things look yellowish at first, but the world begins to look normal after wearing them for a while. Everything seems tinted blue when you take them off, and things gradually become their usual color again.

Visual Encoding of Color is different for humans and machines. Typical color imaging systems process color images as three RGB or CMY color separations. The human visual system decomposes color information into a luminance channel that contains the "black-and-white" information in the scene and two chrominance channels that contain the hue and saturation information.

Effect of Surroundings on Image Color Appearance refers to the how images are viewed differently in different environments. For example, prints are usually viewed in a light environment while projected slides are viewed in the dark. When an image is viewed in the dark it appears to have lower contrast and saturation.




Visit the Munsell Color Science Laboratory web site for more information.