Comment by refulgentis

> Yes, it's a matmul; many color models just boil down to simple math.

All do. :)

> For example, look at Li and Luo's 2024 "simple color appearance model"[1], which is very similar to OKLab (just matmul!), and created for many of the same reasons (just an approximation!)

I don't understand what this shows me. I don't see anyone in the thread arguing there can only be one color model with one matmul. I feel self-concious I'm missing something, so I thought maybe the implication is this a real scientist working on a real space therefore our haranguing about "actual" perceptual spaces is hair-splitting, as we see a color scientist making an approximation. You also note that it is an approximation, as does the paper, so I don't think that's the case...idk :(

> Like OKLab, it also improves upon CAM16-UCS hue linearity issues in blue. Ironically, Luo was one of the authors who proposed CAM16-UCS in 2017.

What's the ironic part? (my understanding: you read this as a competition, so you find it ironic, in the colloquial sense, that the color space you perceive us advocating for, or that Oklab can replace, was created by someone who made a singular matmul type-space like Oklab in a paper?)

> I'm not yet convinced it is superior to OKLab (you can see my implementation here: [2]).

I appreciate your work and desire here and you have firey curiosity. In practice, color science uses UCS spaces to measure color difference, not render colors. (he uses CAM16-UCS and CAM16 interchangeably as well, it's confusing)

> And I think you might be mis-remembering Ottosson's original blog post; he demonstrates a gradient between white and blue, not blue and yellow.

You're right! That makes a whole lot less obvious that there's something wrong. :( Here, the sin is throwing away the whole science bit and says that's fine, look at this example.

See gradients here. https://m3.material.io/blog/science-of-color-design

Note particularly the black and white one. Gives a great sense of how much of an outlier Oklab is, and you can't fuck around with lightness that much, that's how you measure contrast.