A Satirical Manifesto Against Color Calibration
Description
A meme presented as a humorous, conspiratorial rant against the science of color calibration. The image has a light blue background with bold black text. The title is "STOP CALIBRATING COLOR". It lists several absurd arguments, such as "COLOR IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE CUBES" and mocks the use of specific color codes like hex (#FFE3B8) and RGB (230, 23, 74), calling them "Statements dreamed up by the utterly Deranged." The meme displays three scientific diagrams used in colorimetry - a CIE chromaticity diagram (labeled Rec.2020), a wireframe color cube, and a 3D color gamut - each with red question marks underneath to feign confusion. The punchline is the sentence, "'Hello I would like a [image of a colorful checkerboard pattern] bike please'", satirizing the impracticality of applying complex digital color models to the real world. The meme concludes with, "They have played us for absolute fools." The joke targets anyone in tech or design who deals with the complexities of digital color, mocking the gap between precise mathematical models and subjective human perception
Comments
32Comment deleted
This is what happens after a frontend dev spends a week trying to match a designer's Figma hex code to what the product manager sees on their iPhone with True Tone and Night Shift enabled
Sure, PM - let’s spend two sprints converting the color cube to CIELAB just so you can tell marketing the button is ‘more red.’
After 20 years of implementing color management systems and arguing about sRGB vs Display P3, I've realized the real color space we're all working in is 'whatever looked right on the designer's uncalibrated MacBook at 2am with f.lux running'
After decades of building elaborate color management systems with ICC profiles, gamma correction, and perceptually uniform color spaces, we've finally achieved what we always wanted: the ability to tell a designer that their 'slightly warmer red' requires a 47-page specification document and three sprint planning meetings to implement. Meanwhile, the client just wanted 'the red one, you know, like a fire truck' - a requirement that somehow got translated into a 12-dimensional color space transformation pipeline that crashes on Tuesdays
Color gamuts in 3D cubes: because arguing over photon precision beats the real-world hell of 'it looks different on my phone' every sprint
We spent two sprints picking brand red in OKLCH and calibrating monitors; marketing shipped a Display‑P3 PNG - now Chrome, Safari, and Windows all render it differently, proving color management is the only spec where being compliant still looks wrong
We maintain ICC profiles, P3 fallbacks, and 3D LUTs so stakeholders can still say “make it red” on an uncalibrated monitor at 120% brightness
After doing a bit of coding on darktable and seeing all that colorspace discussions, the color response curves... I feel this in my bones. Comment deleted
Calibration is simply "adjusting knobs": setting up the desired mode with hardware controls, if any, and then adjusting linearization (gamma coreection), if applicable. Color management is the real deal — that is, building the device profile (ideally, from a calibrated device, but that is not absolutely necessary in the narrow sense) and perform color-space matching from source to target: first, from input device — a scanner or a camera — to the working space (sRGB, Adobe RGB, etc.), then from the working space to display device, and ultimately to output device — a printer or a printing machine, possibly doing intermediate color-proofing on a display and/or on a desktop printer. 🤓 Comment deleted
You said it before I could Comment deleted
Assessing color gamut on a 2D-diagram, even u'v' or a*b*, is stupid. It requires a visually uniform 3D-space, like L*a*b* (the third picture). Assessing color gamut on a xy diagram is the most stupid and lame thing to do. 🤓 Comment deleted
A bunch of the "🤓☝️" in the comments Comment deleted
🤓 Comment deleted
Colors are relative, not absolute Comment deleted
Colors are merely a perception, they don't exist in reality. Comment deleted
It's a perception of relative quantities of wavelengths tho, which do exist Comment deleted
What exists is the electromagnetic radiation. But there is no such thing as "blue color" or "red color". Also, color perception should better be associated with frequencies rather than wave lengths, as the latter depend on speed of light in the medium, while color perception does not (colors do not change underwater, for example) — it does depend on photon energy, which is proportional to its frequency. 🤓 Comment deleted
Good luck finding the electromagnetic wavelengths for magenta and all the colors in the "purples" Comment deleted
N.W.: purples, not violets, as a specific range of violets are spectral Comment deleted
What makes you think that all colors must be strictly monochromatic (with maximum saturation)? Comment deleted
But frequency depends on how precise you can measure the time, you have to take your clock everywhere with you. Comment deleted
My guess is that colorimetry is the least important thing when time-space issues are to be considered, but color perception may still be unaffected. Comment deleted
Yes, but i think space(maybe a ruler to measure the distance) is still the same even on other planets, but measuring the time is a bit different. You know, even gravity and acceleration affects time. Let's stick to wavelength for now. Comment deleted
Many decisions in colorimetry were made (prior to 1930) not because the scientists knew how to do things properly, but because they didn't have the knowledge we currently have, nor did they have today's instrumentation, nor computing power. That's why we still use wave lengths, CIE rgb primaries, XYZ color space, 2° standard observer, — based on studying color perception of just 17 people in a very specific conditions. Comment deleted
what more interesting is that subtractive colors were studied well prior to that and also still widely used as CMY color palette Comment deleted
not really, we can use diffraction grating to analyze the full spectrum of light Comment deleted
My #FFE3B8 is better than your #FFE3B8 Comment deleted
better #FEMBOY Comment deleted
or #DEADBEEF Comment deleted
with opacity Comment deleted
"white overprint" 🤪 Comment deleted
> Using RGB to ask for specific paint shades Shiggydiggy Comment deleted