Grassmann's laws (color science)

Grassmann's laws describe empirical results about how the perception of mixtures of colored lights (i.e., lights that co-stimulate the same area on the retina) composed of different spectral power distributions can be algebraically related to one another in a color matching context.

Discovered by Hermann Grassmann[1] these "laws" are actually principles used to predict color match responses to a good approximation under photopic and mesopic vision.

A number of studies have examined how and why they provide poor predictions under specific conditions.

[2][3] The four laws are described in modern texts[5] with varying degrees of algebraic notation and are summarized as follows (the precise numbering and corollary definitions can vary across sources[6]): These laws entail an algebraic representation of colored light.

[7] Assuming beam 1 and 2 each have a color, and the observer chooses

as the strengths of the primaries that match beam 2, then if the two beams were combined, the matching values will be the sums of the components.

, where: Grassmann's laws can be expressed in general form by stating that for a given color with a spectral power distribution

are the color matching functions with respect to the chosen primaries.