Did you know colors can create moods?

Think about it. Does blue make you feel calm? Does red make you angry or agitated, or does it give you a feeling of warmth, like love? Does brown get you down?

Why does color affect us?
What effects can it have on our bodies and minds?

There is an area of psychology that studies the influence colors have on our psyches, but exhaustive research hasn’t really been done like in other areas. Despite the general lack of research into the psychology of color, the concept has become a hot topic in marketing, art, design and cinema. Cinematographers, directors, editors and production designers use specific colors or color palettes to evoke moods.

We all perceive colors differently, and these perceptions are somewhat subjective. Red may mean angry to some while others see love, for instance. Still, some color effects, psychologists say, have mostly universal meaning. Colors in the red area of the color spectrum are known as warm colors and include red, orange, and yellow. These warm colors evoke emotions ranging from feelings of warmth and comfort to feelings of anger and hostility. Colors on the blue side of the spectrum are known as cool colors and include blue, purple, and green. These colors are often described as calm but can also make us feel sadness or indifference. There’s a reason why race cars are red and school buses are yellow.

It seems todays projectors are in a race to be brighter and brighter without regard to color quality. BenQ’s mission and core value is to create the most accurate color through optimal balance of brightness and accurate color.

So, if film makers use color to manipulate our emotions to enhance our experience in the multiplex, how do we replicate the same feelings at home? Quite simply, we need to see the colors the film makers intended us to see. BenQ home theater projectors carry this credo: “Convey the truest color and impart the deepest feelings to the viewer.” Our THX and ISF (video calibration) dual-certified engineers deliver 100% Rec. 709 color gamut for perfect color consistency. Our top projectors achieve the 100% DCI-P3 wide color gamut, and only BenQ provides calibration reports, for example the HT3550 has a Delta E performance less than 3 to reproduce authentic colors of Hollywood films. Delta E is a metric for understanding how the human eye perceives color difference. Basically, Delta E (sometimes written as dE) measures the “distance” between colors. The term delta comes from mathematics, meaning change in a variable or function. The suffix E references the German word Empfindung, which broadly means sensation.

The idea is that a dE of 1.0 is the smallest color difference the human eye can see. So any dE less than 1.0 is imperceptible and any dE greater than 1.0 is noticeable.

The Delta E rating of BenQ Home Theater projectors means, simply, that our projectors are able to present millions of shades of color and enable the viewer to experience these as film makers intended. The colors they chose to create mood and emotion have their intended effect, and we enjoy the programs as they hoped.

As mentioned earlier, color perception can be subjective. Some may see red while others see pink. Remember the “What color is this dress?” meme from a while back?

That was the best example of color perception to come across the interwebs in a long time. Arguments ensued and similar “color challenges” are popular today.

The Rec. 709 color standard was created by ITU (International Telecommunication Union) for TV, movie and A/V industries to ensure all HD equipment including displays, DVDs, and Blu-rays use the same color gamut, resolution, frame rate and video specifications. Rec. 709 uses specific red, green and blue colors and Illuminant D65 (6500k) for the specific white point to build a standardized color space and reproduce accurate color gamut and grayscale. All colors blend into white, so it’s important to set the white point accurately. It’s the foundation for the rest of the spectrum to build outward.

DCI-P3 (Digital Cinema Initiative) is a common RGB color space for digital movie projection and the Hollywood standard. Often referred to as "wide color gamut," DCI-P3’s range is 26% larger than Rec.709. The standard was also adopted by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).

DCI-P3 is expected be adopted in television systems and home cinema as a step towards implementation of the significantly wider color gamut of Rec. 2020, coming next year.

DCI-P3 is especially important in 4K because the 8.3 million pixels in a 4K image can really amplify inconsistencies in the color gamut. It also set the standard that all 4K televisions, monitors and projectors would be measured against.

Used by Rec. 709 as its white point, Illuminant D65 is a commonly used standard defined by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) to represent average daylight with a correlating color temperature of approximately 6500K.

Each of these specifications and technical details are important and only projector models with high color gamut coverage can reproduce colors accurately for viewers to deeply feel the rich vividness of Hollywood movies and the emotions directors convey through colors. In addition to films, even still images with intense colors will be able to reflect BenQ projector’s ability to perfectly present the most beautiful and realistic colors.

You’ll see red when they want you to see red and have a cool blue satisfied feeling.