The Difference Between ‘Violet’ and ‘Purple’ (2015)
This has long been a pet peeve of mine.<p>I don&#x27;t disagree with it but the colors shown in the article aren&#x27;t violet, they are all shades of purple. Spectral violet is outside the gamut of most RGB color spaces, including sRGB, Adobe RGB, Pantone, CIELAB, etc. Monitors also wouldn&#x27;t be able to reproduce it anyway.<p>The CIE 1931 curve showing a bump in red inside the blue is misleading I think. It does not represent how the cones react (the article says so in small print). The L cones aren&#x27;t excited at all when pure blue or indigo or violet light hits them. The graph was built to find the best RGB primaries to use in order to best &quot;emulate&quot; how we interpret colors, so I think it actually already encodes our bias and general lack of skill at distinguishing violet from purple.<p>Similarly many people don&#x27;t really make a distinction for cyan and just call it blue or green when they see it.