History+of+photograph


 * History of colour photography**

To understand what is happening in color photography today it is beneficial to know what has been previously accomplished. The quest for color photography can be traced to [|Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre]’s 1839 public announcement of his daguerreotype process, which produced a finely detailed, one-of-a-kind, direct-positive photographic image through the action of light on a silver-coated copper plate. Daguerreotypes astonished and delighted, but nevertheless people complained that the images lacked color. As we see the world in color, others immediately began to seek ways to overcome this deficiency and the first colored photographs made their appearance that same year. The color was applied by hand, directly on the daguerreotype’s surface. Since then scores of improvements and new processes have been patented for commercial use.


 * Color photography** is [|photography] that uses media capable of representing [|colors], which are traditionally produced chemically during the [|photographic processing] phase. By contrast, [|black-and-white] (monochrome) photography records only a single channel of [|luminance] (brightness) and uses media capable only of showing shades of gray.
 * **1861**: Scottish physicist James Clerk-Maxwell demonstrates a color photography system involving three black and white photographs, each taken through a red, green, or blue filter. The photos were turned into lantern slides and projected in registration with the same color filters. This is the "color separation" method.

In the additive process separate colored beams of red, green, and blue light are mixed to form any color in the visible spectrum. When the three additive primaries are mixed in equal proportions, they appear as white light to the human eye.