RESEARCH ON MULTIMEDIA

Part I: COLOR

Multimedia as a field of study is interdisciplinary. It draws upon a number of disciplines, including art, English, science, math, business, religion, and social sciences. Some idea of the concept has existed for thousands of years, whether in the mystical chants of monks or the raised icons in certain forms of calligraphy. A pioneer of the idea that one media (color, for example) can stimulate other senses (sound or smell, for example) and that the whole arrangement can be orchestrated was the slightly-mad 19th century Russian composer, Scriabin.  He is most famous for inventing the color organ, also known as the Mysterium or synthesizer. His symphony, Prometheus, provided audiences with things they could hear, see, touch, and smell (by burning incense).  Here's the tonal alphabet according to Scriabin:

Color is a vital component of multimedia, and it's important to understand both the subjective (pseudoscientific) and technical features of it. Many guidelines and models exist to better accomodate an audience. Humans, for example, cannot see colors below red (infrared), but computers easily display them. The higher end of the spectrum (ultraviolet) is harmful to humans. Reds may show up as brown on television. White is too noisy for some viewers. Rods and cones in the eyes are sensitive to Red, Green, and Blue, but can differentiate between degrees of hue, saturation, and brightness. Hues are controlled by resolution, and saturation and brightness by palettes. What's your favorite color? Americans tend to like Blue and darker colors. Their visual habits interpolate many separate hues as blue or black. 

Research suggests that Red is a stimulating color that increases heart and respiratory rates. Thus, red works as an excellent attention grabber and accent but not as a background color. Yellow also demands attention, but being highly reflective, creates eye fatigue and aggravation. Blue tends to relax the nervous system, and some studies show it increases productivity and acts as a natural appetite suppressant.

A computer monitor works by shooting little dots of Red, Green, or Blue (RGB) at the screen in hopes that the user will interpolate the rest of the hues. These dots are about .30 mm or less in diameter (the dot pitch) and arranged more or less closely together in several matrixes (the pixel resolution). Most monitors are set at 640x480 (VGA standard), which allows only 256 possible hues or other colors. Changing your monitor's resolution to 800x600 or 1024x768 would be more compatible with what your eyes are capable of seeing. Higher resolutions require bigger, better monitors, more computer memory, and a decent graphics card or motherboard. Younger people see and respond to more hues of color than older people.

Computerized color is not the same as perceived color. On the Web, colors are represented by mathematical hexadecimal pairs controlled by algorithm tables (the palettes) selected by the user or used by default (Netscape 256 color default or the browser safe 216 color default). Palettes are generated by math, not by visual inspection. Palettes also control the bit depth (saturation and brightness), which are aspects of purity and intensity. Here, we're not interested in size so much as clarity, depth, or photo-realism. Printers and scanners as well as computers have adjustable depth. Macintosh technology is different from Windows terminology, but the following table contains the standard way of describing bit depth:

Image editing, painting, or scanning are common multimedia tasks, and the general rule is to start with the largest file format possible, working down to a smaller file format. A process known as dithering should be done by the person creating the graphic, or the end user's machine may automatically dither the graphic. Dithering is the process of rendering something as close to the original by approximating the original colors. For example, scanning an image in bitmap format (the standard default for scanners) will result in a huge file (several thousands of bits in size) because all the colors are represented. Reducing the file to CompuServe GIF or JPG format will reduce its size, but also average some pixels to their next closest color, or average the color over some area of the image. To edit or make changes with an image, work with the bitmap format. You can always go down, but you can't go back up. Dithering requires visual inspection and your calculation of the tradeoff between quality and speed. An image dithered down to 8-bit (the most common) format will still look like the original and load quicker on computers.

Macintosh computers will allow you to import a bitmap image, but not edit it. Apple uses PICT format, which is kind of like Windows metafile (combination of bitmap and vector graphics) or PDF (Adobe Acrobat). Vector graphics contain mathematical lines called bezier curves around the outline of the image. Adobe and Macromedia applications can convert just about anything, however. Some common file formats, from large to small, are:

GIF and JPG are the two most common graphics formats used on the Web. Both load easily on any kind of computer.

INTERNET RESOURCES:
Graphics 101
Secrets of Web Colors Revealed

Last updated: 11/15/01