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Pigments with D3.js    • submit to reddit  “In the early 1900s,
scientists found that a liquid or solid heated to high
temperatures would give off a broad range of colours of light.
However, a gas heated to similar temperatures would emit light
only at certain specific colours (wavelengths). The reason for
this observation was not understood at the time.” [1]  I’ve
wondered if this principle could extend to pigments in artistic
works – while the process of generating light is different,
various colors have gone in and out of fashion over time. Modern
fabric dyes hold vivid, even lurid colors, whereas some pigments
have fallen in popularity due to toxicity (lead, cadmium) or
cheaper replacements, E.g. lapis lazuli as the basis for
ultramarine blue in Renaissance painting. If you could identify
the presence of specific pigments from a photograph, it might
provide a crude filtering mechanism for images to help find
images from a particular time peri