Dear bgolfing,
Color does matter to the eyes. Red attracts, contrast enhances edges, the hues in the green create Gestalt effects with the hue of the aim line, the putter head color mixes with the line, daylight mixes with certain spectral hues and washes them out, certain hues and contrasts show up better in twilight, etc.
I've never heard that "scooty" cameron has any knowledge of these matters. Perhaps he does but it doesn't show.
Johannes Itten is the standard name for color theory, from the Bauhaus art movement in Germany. The
Itten color theory dominates art schools around the world. "Johannes Itten was one of the first people to define and identify strategies for successful color combinations. Through his research he devised seven methodologies for coordinating colors utilizing the hue's contrasting properties. These contrasts add other variations with respect to the intensity of the respective hues; i.e. contrasts may be obtained due to light, moderate, or dark value."
The basics of color are: "Color is the perceptual characteristic of light described by a color name. Specifically, color is light, and light is composed of many colors—those we see are the colors of the visual spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Objects absorb certain wavelengths and reflect others back to the viewer. We perceive these wavelengths as color.
A color is described in three ways: by its name, how pure or desaturated it is, and its value or lightness. Although pink, crimson, and brick are all variations of the color red, each hue is distinct and differentiated by its chroma, saturation, intensity, and value.
Chroma, intensity, saturation and luminance/value are inter-related terms and have to do with the description of a color.
Chroma: How pure a hue is in relation to gray
Saturation: The degree of purity of a hue.
Intensity: The brightness or dullness of a hue. One may lower the intensity by adding white or black.
Luminance / Value: A measure of the amount of light reflected from a hue. Those hues with a high content of white have a higher luminance or value."
An interesting intermixture of colors is between "active" and "passive":
The color wheel can be divided into ranges that are visually active or passive (also warm / cool). Active colors will appear to advance when placed against passive hues. Passive colors appear to recede when positioned against active hues.
color wheel displaying active - passive ranges
* Advancing hues are most often thought to have less visual weight than the receding hues.
* Most often warm, saturated, light value hues are "active" and visually advance.
* Cool, low saturated, dark value hues are "passive" and visually recede.
* Tints or hues with a low saturation appear lighter than shades or highly saturated colors.
* Some colors remain visually neutral or indifferent.
"Green" is the dominant color of human vision, given the environment at eye level where the food is hiding.
Roughly speaking, human visual perception includes wavelengths of light in a rainbow spectrum between about 400 nanometers (short-wave blue light) to about 700 nanometers (longer-wave red light), with many more of the range of "light" (i.e., electromagnetic) wavelengths above and below this tiny vision range that span the gamut from radio waves miles in length to ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma rays, and cosmic rays of increasingly smaller wavelength.
In the human visual spectrum, these are the colors as arrayed along the wavelengths from 400 nm short (blue) at left to 700 nm long (red at right) with green approximately in the middle around 550 nanometers (halfway along the 300-nm spread):
The neuroanatomical mechanism by which the human perceives color starts with the "cones" in central vision and from there passes to the occipital lobe, where layers of visual processing of lines, edges, corners, colors, luminance, and associations of shapes and distances and motion with familiar visual experiences generate a "best guess" of what is real. "
And every bear becomes a bush." -- Shakespeare.
The first problem of color vision is the cones. The cones do not operate without light energy fueling the chemistry of the eye, so at night there is no color. The rods are not made for color and detect or perceive shape and motion in a monotonic grey-scale world, which is actually an unabandoned, keep-it-simple survival strategy for vision that is more primitive and fundamental than color vision, which is a late-comer in evolution. Periperhal vision and "scotopic" night-time vision works mostly with objects moving outside of central vision, but at night the rods take over for central vision as well.
So, no cones, no color. Cones go "off" when overused in bright light and otherwise and at night. The transition at twilight from color vision to scotopic rod vision usually takes about 20-40 minutes, depending upon streetlights, moon phase, season, local hills, etc. During this transition, the cones are dimming out and color is fading or draining from the bloom of the roses.
The cones for color come in three types: red, green, and blue:
Each cone is fueled by a cascading biochemical process of the rhodopsin molecule that amplifies tiny energies of light many fold over and pass the signals from chemical to optic-nerve bio-electrical via the action-potential of nerves, whereby the signal transits along one-for-one cabling to the back of the brain (occipital lobe) for processing. What arrives onto the retinal surface at the inside back of the eyeball is "cabled" straight thru to the occipital lobe in the same spatial arrangement, so there is a "mapping" of the eye scene onto the brain scene, to keep things coordinated.
Rhodopsin:
The rhodopsin cascade is "reset" by other chemical restorative processes, but if the level of rhodopsin firing from bright or intense light and long usage "bleaches" the rhodopsin, color vision suffers. Hence, sunglasses for golfers, and in particular cinammon or purplish filter lenses for "putting glasses" where the visual environment looking down at the "green" is even more dominated by this wavelength than the rest of the game (tee box, fairways, rough, Black Forest filled with evil demons...)
Roxor putting glasses from Sweden:
And as night falls, the rhodopsin goes quiet. But of course golf stops at dark, usually, so our concern is mostly "bleaching" of the eye chemistry for color vision.
According to Roxor:
"The eye
The human eye contains photoreceptors, which are located in the retina. There are two types of photoreceptors, rods that primarily determine night vision and cones, which provide high acuity (definition) and colour vision in daytime light conditions. There are three types of cones in the retina of the human eye, each having a different pigment and different absorption curves. One set of cones is particularly receptive to blue light in the vicinity of about 400 to 450 nm, another set of cones is receptive to absorption of green light around 525 to 575 nm, and the third set of cones is particularly susceptible to red or orange-red light in the vicinity of 550 to 600 nm, there is substantial overlap of these absorption curves and a broad range of wavelengths are absorbed to some extent by the pigments of all photoreceptors. Both rods and cones function to some degree at all time.
Figure: The human eye response at day or night vision
The responses of rods and cones both contribute to vision at intermediate and other low-level intensities of illumination. Furthermore, the human eye response is not directly related to the peaks of wavelengths per se, but rather to an integration of the spectral curve and relative ratios of intensities of the pigments of the cones and rods. At times only two cones are essentially effective.
Current understanding is that the 6 to 7 million cones can be divided into "red" cones (64%), "green" cones (32%), and "blue" cones (2%) based on measured response curves. They provide the eye’s colour sensitivity. The red and green cones are concentrated in fovea centralis. The "blue" cones have the highest sensitivity and are mostly found outside the fovea, leading to some distinctions in the eye’s blue perception.
As light intensity falls, the human eye becomes increasingly sensitive to light of shorter wavelengths. At low light conditions such as twilight the eye is most sensitive to a blue-green light such as 510 nm.
Figure: The human eye response to colour perception
The human eye does not perceive all wavelengths of colour evenly. Rather the normal human eye response peaks at approximately 560 nm (green), sloping off to the right and left of the spectrum, resulting in what is refereed to in the art as the bell-shaped photopic response curve of the human eye. The human eye can thus perceive the colour green more effectively than other colours of the spectrum. It is also known, however, that not all people perceive colours exactly the same. For example, a common defect of eye, referred to as " colour blind" about 8% of population by men, causes some people to confuse the colour red and green. Colour perception is also affected by the illuminating light source.
There thus remains a need for special purpose lens, which enhances different shades of the same spectral colour. For example, on a golf course, there are many different shades of colour green. A golfer, which ”reads” the different greens correctly, has an advantage over a golfer who cannot perceive subtle differences between the different shades of greens on a golf course. There are of course other environments having different predominant spectral colours for which a special purpose lens having the ability to enhance the different shades of the spectral colour would be useful."
The visual spectrum at night is mostly high-energy blues-greens:
"Green response
Referring to the photoptic response curve of the unaided human eye is shown to have 100% sensitivity at a wavelength of 560 nm (+/- about 5 nm) which is recognized in the colour art to be pure green, Thus, the human eye perceives the spectral colour green better than it perceives other colour.
Referring to spectral curves of grass are shown to have a common 100%R peak at about 556 nm, with the curves having increasing differentiation extending in opposite directions of 556 nm. At 556 nm, the eye perceives 100% reflectance of pure green when viewing grass. This coupled with the fact that the eye is highly sensitive to the colour green, means that the eye is being overwhelmed with the colour green, making it very difficult to perceive the subtle differences in the shades of green on either side of 556 nm."
Grass absorbs wavelengths other than green and reflects mostly green. This has to do with the basic spectral dominance of yellow-red in our sun as viewed in attmospheric conditions by plants.
As it happens, human color vision seems to smear together lots of very precise color information available in the world (e.g., the many, many hues available in the sheen of a butterfly's wing or the oily spot in the mud puddle in the gas station parking lot). This is also a keep-it-simple approach to survival. Color is only so important, as the spangles on the enemy's uniform matter a lot less than the fact that he has you in his sights off to your left. This makes the grass look more the SAME green than it really is.
Putting glasses "filter out" the grass wavelengths while leaving the other wavelengths to pass thru, whereas "usual" sunglasses simply reduce all wavelengths by reducing luminosity / level of brightness and using one-filter-color-affects-all-colors for the lenses.
The Roxor glasses sort of "dig a hole" in the usual visual experience where the green is:
Aside from "bleaching" and scotopic / phototopic vision affecting color perception, and the somewhat limited role of color in adding to structural and spatial contrast in object-in-space perception, there is the added problem that color vision cones don't know tghe difference between luminance level and hue when it comes to deciding what "color" is out there. The Impressionist painters used to paint the same haystack in southern France at different times of the day to observe how the color experience changes with luminosity. (See, e.g., The Tuning of Human Photopigments may Minimize Red-Green Chromatic Signals in Natural Conditions, M. G. Nagle, D. Osorio,
Proceedings of the Royal Soc. of London: Biological Sciences, Vol. 252, No. 1335 (Jun. 22, 1993), pp. 209-213,
BACK TO PUTTERS AND GREENS:
The human visual system is mostly about "contrast" along edges instead of about color, but color "contrast" plays a role in the brain's perception of edges and lines and hence in the directionality and spatial placement and orientation of objects in our environment.
Contrast is a luminosity issue that applies to grey-scale as well as to color experience. Black and white are, respectively, the absence of color hue and the presence of all color hue. Greyscale (or grayscale) is a continuous range of "shades" of grey. This greyscale vision is the monotonic primitive vision that preceded color vision in animals.
A continuous chart of
greyscale shades (about 4,096 shades):
The world seen in color, greyscale, and black-and-white:
As most people know from looking at Ansel Adams "greyscale" monotonic phoitographs (not really "black and white" as a loosely used term), greyscale can have very sharp definitions of contrast along lines and edges for the deifintion of objects in spatial environments (looming mesas, distant rain-filled clouds, a meadow of flowers in the High Sierras, etc.). And color per se can degrade contrast.
However, CERTAIN color combinations can mitigate the degradative effects of color on greyscale contrast. Colors have implied greyscale called "shade" and "tint". "Shade and tint are terms that refer to a variation of a hue. Shade: A hue produced by the addition of black. Tint: A hue produced by the addition of white." Hence, cherry, rose, and brick are all "shades" of red. If you stripped out the color, you would still have the monotonic greyscale, which is the primitive realm of vision beneath color vision. The contrast "hides" in the color, so to speak.
But the contrast also can be smudged over more or less effectively, depending upon how close the different color wavelengths are to one another when looking for the line or edge of the object. Hence, frogs are green to hide in the green vegetation -- the basic evolutionary function of camouflage. Or, in the case of this Madagascar frog, rocky colored:
The "ghillie dhu" is a Scots sprite who dresses in leaves and branches, and a "ghillie suit" was first used by Scots hunters to stalk prey, later entering militarty service for snipers in the Boer War.
The ghillie suits obscures contrast of the shape of the human by blending in the edges of the human form with the background wavelengths.
So camouflage is mostly obscuring color contrast and shape contrast.
A good approach to how a golfer "sees" the color of the putter against the green and the aim line against the putter head in the context of then green is to think of the golfer in a worst-case scenario -- as if the golfer has deficient visual capabilities and does not ordinarily see contrast very well due to various conditions. Thinking about what would "enhance" color contrast for this deficient golfer then would apply to all golfers not so handicapped.
Lighthouse International has this to say:
"Effective Color Contrast
Designing for People with Partial Sight and Color Deficiencies
by Aries Arditi, PhD
This Web page contains three basic guidelines for making effective color choices that work for nearly everyone. Following the guidelines are explanations of the three perceptual attributes of color -- hue, lightness and saturation -- as they are used by vision scientists.
How does impaired vision affect color perception?
Partial sight, aging and congenital color deficits all produce changes in perception that reduce the visual effectiveness of certain color combinations. Two colors that contrast sharply to someone with normal vision may be far less distinguishable to someone with a visual disorder. It is important to appreciate that it is the contrast of colors one against another that makes them more or less discernible rather than the individual colors themselves. Here are three simple rules for making effective color choices:
1. Exaggerate lightness differences between foreground and background colors, and avoid using colors of similar lightness adjacent to one another, even if they differ in saturation or hue.
Dont assume that the lightness you perceive will be the same as the lightness perceived by people with color deficits. You can generally assume that they will see less contrast between colors than you will. If you lighten the light colors and darken the dark colors in your design, you will increase its visual accessibility.
2. Choose dark colors with hues from the bottom half of this hue circle against light colors from the top half of the circle. Avoid contrasting light colors from the bottom half against dark colors from the top half. The orientation of this hue circle was chosen to illustrate this point.
For most people with partial sight and/or congenital color deficiencies, the lightness values of colors in the bottom half of the hue circle tend to be reduced.
3. Avoid contrasting hues from adjacent parts of the hue circle, especially if the colors do not contrast sharply in lightness.
Color deficiencies associated with partial sight and congenital deficiencies make it difficult to discriminate between colors of similar hue.
Hue, lightness and saturation -- the three perceptual attributes of color -- can be envisioned as a solid.
Hue varies around the solid; lightness varies from top to bottom and saturation is the distance from the center.
Hue is the perceptual attribute associated with elementary color names.
Hue enables us to identify basic color catagories such as blue, green, yellow, red and purple. People with normal color vision report that hues follow a natural sequence based on their similarity to one another. With most color deficits, the ability to discriminate between colors on the basis of hue is diminished.
Lightness corresponds to how much light appears to be reflected from a colored surface in relation to nearby surfaces.
Lightness, like hue, is a perceptual attribute that cannot be computed from physical measurements alone. It is the most important attribute in making contrast more effective.
With color deficits, the ability to discriminate colors on the basis of lightness is reduced.
To a person with color-deficient partial sight, the left-hand panel might appear like the right-hand panel appears to a person with normal color vision.
With color deficits, the ability to discriminate colors on the basis of all three attributes -- hue, lightness and saturation -- is reduced. Designers can help to compensate for these deficits by making colors differ more dramatically in all three attributes.
Aries Arditi, PhD, is Senior Fellow in Vision Science, Lighthouse International; this brochure is based on his earlier work with Kenneth Knoblauch."
PUTTERS
My earlier study of
putter color contrasts is here. You can see the basic difference in the black and grey of Never Compromise putters as compared, for exmple, to the Tad More light silver mallet head with light gold mid-section on top of the putter head serving as the aim line. The Tad Moore putter violates the main rule of the Lighthouse position: don't mix two light colors.
Which is better for contrast -- black and brass or black and silver? Comparing the Gibas putters (black and brass) with the Gold Foundry putters (black and silver), the brass and black combination enhances contrast more. That is because "silver" and "grey" has a hefty component of black depending upon how "shaded" it is by black. The Gauge M2 model has a silver putter head, a lighter silver flange, and a lighter still aim line on the flange, so each step on the way has added white to make a lighter "tint". This obscures the contrast pretty good.
Which is better -- black to the outside (heel and toe) and grey to the inside middle or grey to the outside and black to the middle? Never Compromise putters are black outside, grey inside, while the Contender, Dynacraft, and Nickent models are grey outside, black inside. The white line on the black of the latter models is more contrast than the grey or black line of the Never Compromise models against the grey of the middle.
Looking at the putter head and aim line against the backgroiund of the green surface, The contrasting colors to green in the putter head and aim line and the issue of comparative lightness of these colors with the grass that particular day (see the Impressionists) "colors" the perception of contrast. Verdant, lush grass has a deeper blue-black component than the tawny color of dried, near-dead grass. Black contrasts more on dry tawny grass than on lush, dark green grass.
This
color contrast tool allows confounding of color and brightness to check whether there is a good, bad, or indifferent combination of background and foregound colors for contrast. If the brightness difference rises above a minimum (125) OR the color difference rises above a certain minimum (500), the contrast is branded "good"; If the brightness difference drops below a minimum (125) OR the color difference drops below a certain minimum (500), the contrast is branded "bad"; and is otherwise "sort of" okay.
These numbers are the result of an algorithm for the mix of red, green, and blue components in a color (from
Juicy Studio's color contrast machine):
"Colour Brightness Formula
The following is the formula suggested by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to determine the brightness of a colour.
((Red value X 299) + (Green value X 587) + (Blue value X 114)) / 1000
The difference between the background brightness, and the foreground brightness should be greater than 125.
Colour Difference Formula
The following is the formula suggested by the W3C to determine the difference between two colours.
(maximum (Red value 1, Red value 2) - minimum (Red value 1, Red value 2)) + (maximum (Green value 1, Green value 2) - minimum (Green value 1, Green value 2)) + (maximum (Blue value 1, Blue value 2) - minimum (Blue value 1, Blue value 2))
The difference between the background colour and the foreground colour should be greater than 500."
(Here are
10 separate tools for color contrast analysis using different standards or algorithms for web-based graphic design.)
In the simple case of black and white, with white as foreground: the brightness difference is 255 and the color difference is 765. With black as foreground, the values are 255 and 765 respectively (the same). This in reality would not be the same against the background of the green, as the lightness / color difference of the surface would influence the color contrast on the putter head between putter head and aim line.
Red is ordinarily thought of as contrasting with green, but a red foreground against a green background scores at 74.44 and 510 (sort of okay). When the specific hue of the "green" is adjusted to look more like a real green (a little less green, a little more blue, a bit of red), then the numbers worsen to something like 80, 460, a definite "bad". Black foreground on green background is about 158, 382 "sort of" okay. White on green is worse at 97, 383, a definite "not good." Apparently, the lightness of the grass is closer to white than it is to black.
Checking the primary colors as background (as if the putter head were a primary color), against a white foreground for the aim line: white aim line / foreground on red putter 179, 510 "good"; white on green 105, 510 "sort of"; white on blue, 226, 510 "good" (best of the three). Checking black as foreground on the primaries: black line on red putter, 76, 255 "bad"; black on green, 150, 255 "sort of"; black on blue, 30, 255 "bad" (worst of the three). Checking a middle grey line as foreground: grey on red, 48, 383 "bad"; grey on green, 25, 379 "bad"; grey on blue, 96, 377 "bad".
Checking black line against complementary colors (yellow-- red + green, magenta-- red + blue; cyan-- green + blue): black on yellow, 255, 510 "good"; black on magenta, 105, 510 "sort of"; cyan, 178, 510 "good". White lin on complementaries: white on yellow, 29, 255 "bad"; white on magenta, 150, 255 "sor of"; white on cyan, 76, 255 "bad".
Grey is any combination of red, green, and blue where the hues are equally between white and black like three greyhounds side-by-side down the home stretch. The closer the greyhounds to the starter's gate (white), the lighter the grey; and the closer to black at the end of the race, the darker the grey. Grey as a foreground on green is "bad" all the way until just before the finish line when it is very nearly black, and is never better than "sort of" okay. making the green more tawny doesn't help either, as the result remains "sort of" okay until the green becomes very light and yellowish. With greys running the wrong wasy, from dark to light, on a usual "green", nothing evcer gets out of "bad" all the way until the grey lightens completely to white. As soon as the greyhounds leave the finish line running towards lighter, the result is "bad".
What is the maximum putter head foreground color to contrast with a usual green of the grass? white 122, 437 "bad"; black, 132, 328 "sort of"; light grey, 97, 366 "bad"; dark grey, 97, 222 "bad"; red, 57, 475 "bad"; green, 17, 219 "bad"; blue, 103, 395 "bad". Black is a bit better than the rest in lightness contrast. That should be a bit surprising to many people, who would regard greens as somewhat dark like black and having more contrast with things white and light. But the difference is small, and the color contrast of white and green is more than between black and green. I would give the putter color nod to lighter rather than darker than green. This analysis supports putter head colors in the very light grey to white or even in the light / bright complementaries. Of the three (yellow, magenta, and cyan), the combination of magenta putter with green grass scores best at 28, 544 (low lightness contrast, high color contrast -- sort of a neon effect of a hot pink putter oin the green).
In all this, lightness of the one color versus darkness of the other color is the principal key. However, the "green" of grass is a "dark hue" from the top half of the color circle in the Lighthouse material, whereas for effective contrast the dark hue should come from below. the lightness of colors in the bottom is not as light as the lightness of colors in the top half. So lower colors are darker. That means that green, being in the top half, is lighter than the blues and purples opposite it in the lower half. The background hue should be coming from the lower half for better golf colors, but Nature demurs! Tiough game, huh?
The one given in this situation is the variation in the color of the greens. The color of the putter head and the aim line have to deal with that. These green colors will differ substantially according to geographical, topological, meteorological, and agronomic factors. In other words, in a world of perfect adaptation to local conditions, there would emerge slightly different "dialects" for putter coloration is different locales.
Beyond gthese basic consideration, there are Gestalt principles that influenc e the mixture of different colored shapes. Here from Itten:
Proportion & Intensity
When colors are juxtaposed, our eyes perceive a visual mix. This mix will differ depending on the proportions of allocated areas.
* The color with the largest proportional area is the dominant color (the ground).
* Smaller areas are subdominant colors.
* Accent colors are those with a small relative area, but offer a contrast because of a variation in hue, intensity, or saturation (the figure).
* Placing small areas of light color on a dark background, or a small area of dark on a light background will create an accent.
* If large areas of a light hue are used, the whole area will appear light; conversely, if large areas of dark values are used, the whole area appears dark.
* Alternating color by intensity rather than proportion will also change the perceived visual mix of color.
How large is the "green" area when looking down at a putter from about 4.5' high? The field of "focused, binocular" vision is the overlap of the two eyes' fields of vision around the nose, and that is roughly a "cone with a apical angle of about 70 degrees. From the trigonometry of a right triangle at the eyes of 35 degrees and an adjacent side of 54", the base left and right of the ball is 38" for a total diameter of the base of this visual cone of about 76" -- a bit over 6 feet wide. That's HUGE compared to the putter head. But even so, visual accuity outside of the central direction of the gaze drops off dramatically, declining to 50% at a mere 5 degrees off dead ahead. So if you're really "focused" on the putter at your feet, the "green is more like 1/7th (35 / 5 degrees) as wide or quite a bit less in breadth -- under a foot wide at the base of this cone. Still, with the putter head being only about 4-5" from heel to toe and not allowed to be any deeper than it is wide by the Rules of Golf, the maximum one usually faces in a putter is a shape of color perhaps 10-20 square inches in area. The "green" would be perhaps 50 square inches in a round shape 5" in radius, 10" in diameter, or so. So the proportion of green to putter in the BEST of cases is 2.5 to 1.
If there is a central "patch" or similar shape to separate the middle from the putter head as a whole, then this thrid shape is usually on the order of 1-2" heel-to-toe and 1" or so front-to-back, so that is about 2 square inches. The "line itself, assuming a simple single line from front edge of top of putter head to back edge, will be on the order of 1/10th of an inch thick and 1" long, so that is 1/10th of a square inch, perhaps 2/10th of a square inch of color. Thus the patch might represent a proportion to the green of 25 to 1, and to the putter head per se of 10 to 11. The line would represent a proportion to the green of 250 to 1, and to the putter head per se of 25 to 1, and to the patch of 10 to 1.
Here are some illustrations of the proportions and contrasts without the patch:
SINGLE-COLOR PUTTER HEADS WITH THIN COLORED AIM LINES:
Black putter with lines: white, red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, grey:
White putter with lines: black, red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, grey:
Red putter with lines: black, white, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, grey:
Green putter with lines: black, white, red, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, grey:
Blue putter with lines: black, white, red, green, cyan, magenta, yellow, grey:
Cyan putter with lines: black, white, red, green, blue, magenta, yellow, grey:
Magenta putter with lines: black, white, red, green, blue, cyan, yellow, grey:
Yellow putter with lines: black, white, red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, grey:
Grey putter with lines: black, white, red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow:
SINGLE-COLORED PUTTER HEADS WITH THICK COLORED LINES:
Black Putter Head:
Brass Putter Head:
Yellow / Gold Putter Head:
Grey Putter Head:
White Putter Head:
BLACK, WHITE, GREY AND YELLOW PATCHES ON BLACK, WHITE, GREY AND YELLOW PUTTERS WITH THICK COLORED LINES (each putter head color with three colors for patches):
Black Putter with Grey Patch:
Black Putter with White Patch:
Black Putter with Yellow / Gold Patch:
White Putter with Black Patch:
White Putter with Grey Patch:
White Putter with Yellow / Gold Patch:
Grey Putter with Black Patch:
Grey Putter with White Patch:
Grey Putter with Yellow / Gold Patch:
Yellow / Gold Putter with Black Patch:
Yellow / Gold Putter with Grey Patch:
Yellow / Gold Putter with White Patch:
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS (special cases extracted from the above):
Black Putter with Same Line on Patches of Different Colors:
Grey Putter with Same Line on Patches of Different Colors:
White Putter with Same Line on Patches of Different Colors:
Yellow / Gold Putter with Same Line on Patches of Different Colors:
These basic color contrast designs suggest many possibilities for putter designs that work well with visual processes for color and contrast in order to enhance the sense of spatial orientation and movement of the putter in the visual field. The next iussue is probably how these contrasts are perceived when the putter head is in motion, as this immediately affects the retinal apparatus so that the putter head image wanders off the fovea, where color vision is concentrated. I suspect that some colors are perceived a little more out of the fovea than others but nothing very dramatic. A subissue here, as always, is the velocity / accelration component of the putter head in the backstroke and then thru the impact area. This motion will douibtless blur the contrasts and obscure the spatial information dervived from the contrasts. This opens the issue of ront to back and discontinuous arrangements of color shapes for the "aim line."
More on this later.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
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