Comment by jiggawatts

One of the worst "ossifications" of non-standards is the notion that colour is three channels of 0..255, one each for red, green, and blue. Combined with the incorrect assumption that the scale is linear[1], and you have a perfect combination for a Dunning-Kruger effect: A bunch of programmers[2] who think they've figured out "graphics", but haven't even begun to understand how any of it works. Not any of: light, display technology, colour standards, or even the human eye.

A short list of falsehoods programmers believe about vision:

- sRGB is the only graphics standard.

- Monitors are actually sRGB and follow that standard.

- Colour intensities are on a linear scale.

- White is 0x00FFFFFF or 255,255,255

- 50% Grey is half of the above: 127,127,127.

- Blending colours is just a matter of linear interpolation.

- Red, green, and blue have a single consistent definition.

- 8 bits is enough for each colour channel.

- Okay, 10 bits is enough.

- 12 bits is enough, surely.

- 0 means black.

- Okay, 16 means black on televisions.

- Fine, black can have different levels in different standards, but it's always clear which level is black.

- At least the white level is consistently defined.

[1] Narrator: it's not even remotely linear.

[2] Including myself until recently.