[HN Gopher] How much oranger do red orange bags make oranges look?
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How much oranger do red orange bags make oranges look?
Author : otras
Score : 52 points
Date : 2025-04-13 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alexanderell.is)
(TXT) w3m dump (alexanderell.is)
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| They really don't look all that different to my untrained eye -
| in fact I think it looks "better" without the bag. Maybe I'm
| loco.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I'm in the same camp. It definitely doesn't look more orange to
| me. If anything, it looks more brown.
|
| The unbagged oranges are more appealing.
| otras wrote:
| Taking another look, I think you're right! Particularly since
| the first orange is pretty orange already. I think the first
| example would have been better served with a yellower, less
| ripe orange to highlight the difference and the pull in the
| redder, riper direction from the bag.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Brown is dark orange, cmv.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| That's like saying green is a yellower blue. It's all
| arbitrary.
| treis wrote:
| The names are arbitrary but the underlying color theory is
| not. Colors are different wavelengths of light and our eyes
| have sensors that are sensitive to specific wavelengths.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Most colors are _mixtures_ of wavelengths of light. Our
| eyes have sensors that are sensitive to specific ranges of
| wavelengths, with relatively broad overlapping response
| curves. Orange can refer to a spectral color, but (as you
| say) the arbitrary nature of the names means it also refers
| to several mixtures of spectral colors of varying
| wavelength and intensity. "Brown" doesn't refer to _any_
| spectral color, it 's always a mixture which could be
| referred to as a "dark orange".
| vultour wrote:
| Well that's pretty much a fact, so why exactly do you want
| someone to change your view?
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Wait, is that "local grocery store" selling those oranges for
| $2.49 _each_?!
| seszett wrote:
| Wow indeed. Though I think the 4.99 ones are by weight, for 2
| lbs? Seems weird though so I'm not sure.
| basisword wrote:
| I think the lighting/camera work doesn't help here. The first
| photo of the orange...doesn't look orange. It's really dark. In
| the photo from the shop they look orange.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| My first thought as well. The author probably has a monitor
| with not very accurate color, those look almost red.
| noqc wrote:
| >The average pixel was not what I expected.
|
| The average pixel doesn't look correct because human vision does
| not interepret shadowed colors as different colors. We first
| guess at the shadows, and then do some kind of inverse mapping
| from the shaded color space to the illuminated one before we
| "perceive a color". This is why the black,blue/white,gold dress
| illusion exists.
| thousand_nights wrote:
| those are some weird oranges
| artimaeis wrote:
| Dekupon oranges (branded Sumo in the US)! They're my favorite.
| Just the right amount of sweet, and the easiest to peel I've
| ever had.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekopon
| decimalenough wrote:
| That's because it's not: it's a mandarin-orange hybrid.
|
| Fun fact: "dekopon" means basically "outie" (as in protruding
| navel, not Severance).
| alwa wrote:
| It makes sense that adding red adds red (in addition to the
| avocado sacks you mention, I think of lemons' yellow bags, limes'
| green bags, and the red packaging/shelf lining and pink-tinged
| light in the butcher's case)--but those images really do look
| strangely exposed to me.
|
| Did you do exercise any specific control over the phone's camera?
|
| I wonder if the ring light might use the sort of general-market
| LEDs that underperform specifically at illuminating saturated
| reds and oranges in this range... see for example
|
| https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/con...
|
| and
|
| https://indiecinemaacademy.com/are-leds-ruining-your-project...
| otras wrote:
| That's a good question, and I could easily see the camera
| settings (and the light) being a source of error here. Naively,
| I used the default iPhone camera with the same exposure for
| each one, then ended up manually removing some of the HDR
| settings from each one when they were showing up as way
| overexposed on my computer. Not exactly an advanced, scientific
| technique, and there was also a bright source of soft white
| light from the window next to the setup, which could have
| thrown off the automatic exposure.
|
| Another comment mentioned it, but I wonder if the overall
| effect would be more visible with yellower baseline oranges
| (or, as you mention, pale lemons and limes). Really interesting
| about the LEDs underperforming as well!
| windsignaling wrote:
| This is interesting because it shows us how a programmer thinks
| of a problem vs. how a psychologist or neuroscientist would think
| of this problem and highlights the lack of "human-ness" in
| programmer thinking.
|
| I'm no fan of schools forcing STEM students to study boring
| electives but this is a prime example of why that might be
| useful.
|
| The entire premise of the post is wrong - average pixel value has
| nothing to do with how orange the oranges look - it's all about
| perception.
|
| Here's an example where the same exact color (pixel value) can be
| perceived as either light or dark depending on the context:
| http://brainden.com/images/identical-colors-big.jpg
|
| That's what the bag adds - context - but the author hasn't made
| this connection.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| While you are correct about color perception, I don't see the
| link to a 'lack of humanness in programmer thinking'. It's not
| an inherent trait to software engineers. The entire field of
| HCI, interaction design and everything around how we deal with
| digital colors are fully focused on the human experience.
|
| Maybe a reminder that computer science != programming.
| xandrius wrote:
| You saw someone making a bunch of observations, setting up an
| experiment and trying to use maths/programming to prove an
| hypothesis they believed to be a sign of "lack of human-ness"?
|
| To me it showed curiosity and ingenuity, sure they might not
| have studied a certain subject but it is a totally valid
| approach to an unknown problem. It might actually get people
| who have similar "silly questions" to run a similar set of
| experiment and perhaps stumble upon something novel.
|
| You comment showed less human-ness than OP, ironically.
| croes wrote:
| I read the lack of human-ness as locking at the wrong place.
|
| It's not reality that changed because of red net but our
| perception of it.
|
| The solution isn't in the oranges but our brain
| hyperhopper wrote:
| It's not a "programmer" problem. Any competent program I know
| would never thing of averaging the color of the orange with the
| color of the non-orabge bag, and expect that to be orange, or
| representative of how we percieve the orange.
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| Context absolutely affects how we see things.
|
| But so does its colour.
|
| So observing how a red mesh affects that colour is absolutely
| worth investigating.
| amarshall wrote:
| See also this popular "optical illusion":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion
| jaffa2 wrote:
| Am i mossing something or is this really a blog post saying that
| if you put something red in a picture and compare it to the same
| thing without red, then the picture with more red, looks, well,
| more red?
| xandrius wrote:
| If you put an object of color X of intensityn N in a net with
| color X of intensity N+M, then the object will get some spill
| over from the net similar to M, which the brain/person doesn't
| necessarily realise and simply assigns it to the object ad
| well.
|
| It is also a consumer advice about not comparing an orange
| inside a bag (of any color) with one outside of one as we have
| a hard time truly comparing them.
| dmurray wrote:
| The best oranges [0] I've had were half green. Fresh from the
| tree, but still plenty ripe.
|
| It's my understanding that oranges for transport to colder
| countries are picked unripe and ripened in the holds of cargo
| ships. This ripening process is great at making the skin more
| orange, and OK at improving the flavour, but nowhere near as good
| for that as ripening on the tree.
|
| So if I saw green patches on my supermarket oranges, far from the
| tropics, I'd be conditioned to expect them to be really good.
| They wouldn't be, of course.
|
| [0] Satsumas? Clementines? I don't want to get into a debate
| about what taxonomically is an orange, but these were citrus
| fruit that turn orange in colour when ripe.
| Aloisius wrote:
| How green an orange is when ripe has to do with the climate
| they are grown in. In warm climates with little variation in
| temperature between day or night, oranges will remain green on
| the tree even when ripe. If nights get cold enough (~55 F),
| they will turn orange.
|
| That said, in the US, oranges destined for markets de-greened
| for aesthetic purposes since customers won't generally buy them
| otherwise.
| Clamchop wrote:
| Oranges and other citrus are examples of non-climacteric
| fruits, meaning they do not continue to ripen after being
| picked. So, they have to be picked at the desired level of
| ripeness.
| mrob wrote:
| >First, the average pixel is not what I would expect it to be at
| all
|
| It looks like the averaging was done in default sRGB color space,
| with:
|
| magick "$f" -resize 1x1 txt:-
|
| Downscaling should instead be done in a linear colorspace. Human
| vision is non-linear, but the filtering required for downscaling
| is equivalent to blurring, which is linear because it's done
| optically not within the retina or brain. Using ImageMagick:
|
| magick "$f" -colorspace RGB -resize 1x1 -colorspace sRGB txt:-
|
| Additionally, JPEG supports chroma subsampling, which is usually
| enabled by default. I don't know what sips does, but with these
| small files you might as well use PNG and avoid the risk of
| losing color information this way.
|
| This should produce results closer to human perception.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| I mean... the first orange basically looks red on my monitor.
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