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study shows as a meta-result the dangers of using the
eleven English BCTs as universals.
The experiments cited shows that the colour
naming system we grew up with even has con-
sequences for brain organisation, thus influencing
our colour processing and perception.
When using colour names in computer vision
and pattern recognition applications involving per-
sons not specifically trained to recognize and name
the colours used, it is thus best to stay with very few
colours. The Hering primaries seem safe enough.
It should also be remembered that although a
trained person can remember and identify up to 500
colours, a stressed human can identify only three or
four colours (Derefeldt, 2007). The latter discovery
has, e.g., influenced the designs of displays in
fighter aircraft.
It is, by the way, probably no coincidence that
the basic heraldic colours used over the centuries in
Europe and elsewhere – or (gold/yellow), argent
(silver/white), azure (blue), gules (red), sable (black)
and vert (green) – are exactly the Hering primaries.
Experience had shown that these colours were easy
to distinguish, especially since only metal on colour
or vice versa was allowed.
Qualifying the six primaries using lightness and
saturation is probably also safe, e.g., “light green”
and “dark green,” or “vivid red” and “dull red.”
Repeating the questions from the Introduction:
How meaningful is it to use many colour names in
applications intended for general, untrained, users?
It will not be clear for everybody which Munsell
chips can be called “azure,” especially if you mother
tongue is not English – and is English azure the
same as Italian azzurro? Which images will be re-
trieved using “flag blue?” Woad blue as the Swedish
or Ukrainian flag or indigo blue as the British or
French?
I suggest results can be disappointing and frus-
trating if the reality of the non-standardization of
colour names is not taken into account.
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