The Difference Between ‘Violet’ and ‘Purple’ (2015)
This has long been a pet peeve of mine.<p>I don't disagree with it but the colors shown in the article aren'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'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'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 "emulate" 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't really make a distinction for cyan and just call it blue or green when they see it.