3 Colour

3.2 The characteristics of colour

Screens can only display a subset of the colours visible to the human eye. This limits the accuracy of colour reproduction. There is also variation between computers, so a web page on a PC may look different when viewed on a Macintosh. There are similar problems with colour printers.

These issues can cause problems for some sectors, such as the fashion industry.

There are also differences in the way we perceive colour from a screen compared to the way we perceive colour from paper. This means that the screen versions of colours can appear rather pale and unreal when compared with the equivalent paper versions. It also increases the likelihood of flickering for colour combinations such as red and blue. Examples of flickering are shown in Figure 3 (b).