The Nature of Colors

[tiredryan]

I have been reading Eugene Hecht's Optics and the quoted text at the end of this post intrigues and confuses me. From his explanation, it seems to be that as the concentration of a dye increases, the reflected light switches to being complementary to the color of the dye.

Question
1.) Do painters have to worry about the concentration of a dye? If the concentration is too high then the blue sky would reflect red-green instead of blue. This might seem problematic to other applications such as printing color images and food coloring. In most cases it seems to be the solvent is intended to dry out, and the dye will become concentrated in the end.

The quoted text is as follows from Hecht Optics 4th ed.
"A bottle of ordinary blue ink looks blue in either reflected
or transmitted light. But if the ink is painted on a glass slide
and the solvent evaporates, something rather interesting
happens. The concentrated pigment absorbs so effectively that it
preferentially reflects at the resonant frequency, and we are
back to the idea that a strong absorber (larger nf) is a strong
reflector. Thus, concentrated blue-green ink reflects red,
whereas red-blue ink reflects green. Try it with a felt marker
(overhead projector pens are best), but you must use reflected
light, being careful not to inundate the sample with unwanted
light from below. The most convenient way to accomplish that
is to put colored ink onto a black surface that isn't very
absorbant. For example, smear red ink over a black area on a
glossy printed page (or better yet, on a black piece of plastic)
and it will glow green in reflected light. Gentian violet, which
you can buy in any drugstore, works beautifully. Put some on
a glass slide and let it dry in a thick coat. Examine both the
reflected and transmitted light—they will be complementary."

Thanks in advance for any contributions to this discussion.

 

[BenchTop]

Painters have to consider the light they work in and the lighting for display.
One wishes to have a studio with north windows for solar spectrum indirect.
A painter has a closed-loop system, though- he sees what it looks like and adjusts to suit, so I'm not sure these saturation effects present any problem.

Iodine is another thing a thin film of will make green reflections like gentian violet, but I thought that was actually iridescence due to diffraction. Is it quite certain whether it's reflection or diffraction with all the things mentioned?

 

[tiredryan]

Thanks for your response.

Here a related puzzle related to the physical nature of colors that I am confused about. Does anyone have any insights on why solid gold is yellow and colloidal gold is red? What is the physical basis of the red shift in colloidal gold? Here is a link to a picture of colloidal gold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ColloidalGold_aq.png

Thanks in advance.

Painters have to consider the light they work in and the lighting for display.
One wishes to have a studio with north windows for solar spectrum indirect.
A painter has a closed-loop system, though- he sees what it looks like and adjusts to suit, so I'm not sure these saturation effects present any problem.

Iodine is another thing a thin film of will make green reflections like gentian violet, but I thought that was actually iridescence due to diffraction. Is it quite certain whether it's reflection or diffraction with all the things mentioned?