No, the “white balance” isn’t sufficient. Spectral power distribution is what might as well be an infinite dimensional space, whereas trichromatic vision is (in a simplified model anyway) 3-dimensional.
You can see the difference between lights if you look through a diffraction grating, though.
There are light sources with very dramatically different spectral power distributions which appear to have the same color if you look directly at the light. These can have substantially different impact on circadian rhythms, brightness adaptation, etc.
Spikier light spectra have an additional problem for color reproduction (unrelated to sleep) which is that they amplify differences in color vision between different observers; everyone’s vision is just slightly different, and if you use very spiky spectra for primaries, the result is that all of the color relationships (say of some photograph) end up looking at least slightly wrong for most people (where “wrong” here means different from what the creator of the image intended). The new phones are just getting toward a spectrum which is spiky enough where our simple models of color reproduction start breaking down; the next-generation gamuts specified for film etc. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020) are beyond that point.
Personally I wish there was less of a rush toward the largest possible color gamut. In marketing and lay understanding larger color gamuts are strictly superior, but (like with many engineering decisions) there are actually serious tradeoffs involved.
This is really interesting. So far I've been looking for the widest gamut monitors as possible, but I guess it's not that simple.
So is there any way to have a wide gamut without getting different results for different people? I can only think of adding more primaries. Or maybe using some "flourescent" material to try and shift the primaries to match a specific viewer?
You can see the difference between lights if you look through a diffraction grating, though.
There are light sources with very dramatically different spectral power distributions which appear to have the same color if you look directly at the light. These can have substantially different impact on circadian rhythms, brightness adaptation, etc.
Spikier light spectra have an additional problem for color reproduction (unrelated to sleep) which is that they amplify differences in color vision between different observers; everyone’s vision is just slightly different, and if you use very spiky spectra for primaries, the result is that all of the color relationships (say of some photograph) end up looking at least slightly wrong for most people (where “wrong” here means different from what the creator of the image intended). The new phones are just getting toward a spectrum which is spiky enough where our simple models of color reproduction start breaking down; the next-generation gamuts specified for film etc. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020) are beyond that point.
Personally I wish there was less of a rush toward the largest possible color gamut. In marketing and lay understanding larger color gamuts are strictly superior, but (like with many engineering decisions) there are actually serious tradeoffs involved.
see e.g. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ist/cic/2014/00002014...