Chromotome: A 3D Interface for Exploring Colour Space

When continuous 3D shapes or enclosed structures, such as solid objects or skeletons, are mapped onto a 2D screen, simplifications such as hulls and wire frames are suitable visualization tools, because most or all of the information is concentrated along discontinuities that occupy only a small proportion of the space. Visualizing a colour space is more difficult. Colour spaces are three-dimensional solids with no discontinuities, and every point in such a space represents a unique colour. A colour space visualization tool must therefore facilitate the exploration of a solid, continuous, three-dimensional shape. Here we describe Chromotome, a software tool that has been developed for this purpose. Chromotome provides a cutaway view of a spherical colour space, and has controls for rotating the space (to alter the hues displayed), for altering the shape of the cutaway, and for visualizing sets of colours positioned according to simple geometrical relationships within the space.