Color Science Reading List

Here is my library from less technical to more technical:

• Basic Vision: an introduction to visual perception by Robert Snowden, Peter Thompson, and Tom Troscianko. This book includes a great introduction to the visual system and perception. It is a great place to start understanding some of the broad physical concepts researchers have tried to model with complex math, and it does so in mostly digestible plain English.
• Interaction of Color by Josef Albers. A book written for laypeople to understand that explores broad concepts in color appearance. Includes a lot of beautiful plates.
• Color Problems, a Practical Manual for the Student of Color by Emily Noyes Vanderpoel. A book written by one of the earliest documented female color scientists in 1901. She did many beautiful plates in the form of abstracted square mosaic blurs. Very interesting read – lots of artistic color theory. She was a white woman of great wealth, and this privilege is probably the reason she was able to publish a work and conduct research in a time when most women were not invited into such circles.
• A Field Guide to Digital Color by Maureen Stone. Slightly more technical than the above and certainly more specific to digital imaging. It also speaks at the broad concept level.
• Color Imaging: Fundamentals and Applications by Erik Reinhard, Erum Arif Khan, Ahmet Oguz Akuz, and Garrett M. Johnson. This book dives deeper into physics, colorimetric concepts such as lightness vs brightness, and has an excellent section on color spaces (p. 405). Equations are provided but with a lot of broad concepts too.
• The Reproduction of Color by R.W.G. Hunt. Many detailed elements of photometry. Includes information on physical systems such as light and printing and digitization. Includes standard observer information.
• Digital Video and HD: Algorithms and Interfaces by Dr. Charles Poynton. Deeply thorough contents on digital image acquisition, reproduction, and display.
• Color Appearance Models by Dr. Mark D. Fairchild. Perhaps my favorite book in my library, this book is a deep dive on psychophysics and the digital modeling of visual perception. This book is the best source on color appearance phenomena at the conceptual level.
• Color Sense and Measurement by Dr. Richard Kirk. This book was the personal “pandemic project” of Richard Kirk at Filmlight. This is an incredible book, a survey from the concept of “what is seeing,” to measuring light, to HDR, to matrix math. It is free on Baselight’s website and an incredibly intellectually generous effort.
• Billmeyer and Saltzman’s Principles of Color Technology by Roy S. Berns. Defining physics of color, measuring color, and producing color. 
• The Art and Science of HDR Imaging by John J. McCann and Alessandro Rizzi. A great resource for discussing physical limitations of HDR, physical components and limitations such as veiling glare, and some algorithms for implementation.
• Color Science Concepts and Methods, Quantitative Data and Formulae, Wyszecki & Stiles. The color science bible. All data and formulae. Need a deep conceptual color science knowledge and good math foundations before you utilize this book.
• Contrast Sensitivity of the Human Eye, and its Effects on Image Quality by Peter G.J. Barten. Incredibly dense reading but the basis for the PQ curve and thus a foundational part of HDR as we know it today.  Need a deep conceptual color science knowledge and good math foundations before you utilize this book.