It turns out there is such a thing as the world’s pinkest pink, and unless you’re really into art or simply willing to spend about £4 online – you may never see it.
YouTuber Tom Scott creates educational videos on topics ranging from history to computer technology and science.
He met with Stuart Semple to test the pink the artist has created.
What Scott explains in the video, which has over 600,000 views, is the pink Semple has created is so vivid that most computer screens aren’t able to reproduce it.
Hundreds of thousands of pixels produce red, green and blue light to create the images on your computer screen, but these pixels have limitations.
Thus, in Scott’s words they “cannot go red, green or blue enough” in the same way that they cannot go darker than a completely dark screen.
What this all amounts to is that the pink which you see on your screen is not the pink Scott can see – which is a shame given the work Semple put into making it.
Semple says in the video that he put a disclaimer on his site where he sells the pink to try and ensure artist Anish Kapoor – who was given exclusive rights to Vantablack, an artificially created black pigment – couldn’t buy the product.
To Semple’s displeasure, Kapoor got hold of the colour though – and in case you were wondering what that post of him with the pink looked like…
So much sass.
This isn’t the first time Scott has pointed out something visually-interesting going on with what we see on screens.
For example here’s a video where he explains why lots of objects on a screen, such as confetti or snow, can affect image quality.
Scott has over 860,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel and if you’d like to keep up to date with what he’s up to you can follow him on Twitter or alternately check out his Facebook page.
