{
  "id": 17151,
  "title": "Potatoes are beige and boring. But they are also the reason color photography exists",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/01/potatoes-are-beige-and-boring-but-they-are-also-the-reason-color",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-08-01T21:20:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Digital Camera World",
    "slug": "digital-camera-world",
    "url": "https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/photography/potatoes-are-beige-and-boring-but-they-are-also-the-reason-color-photography-exists"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The genesis of color photography can be traced back to an unassuming source: the humble potato. In 1861, James Clerk Maxwell theorized that merging red, green and blue light would enable human eyes to perceive a full spectrum of colors in photographs. However, early attempts at capturing color in images were cumbersome and impractical.\n\nFrench brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière ventured into the realm of creating a transparent color filter. They sought a material featuring uniform, microscopic round particles, which could be easily and affordably obtained. The potato offered a solution. Potato starch possesses microscopic round particles, making it an ideal candidate for the task.\n\nThe Lumière brothers devised a method to incorporate dye into potato starch, resulting in separate batches of red, green, and violet. These dyed solutions were then combined and painted onto a sticky glass plate, forming a color filter. Charcoal powder was employed to fill in any gaps and enhance contrast. Light passed through the tri-colored potato starch coating on one side of the glass, illuminating the light-sensitive chemicals on the opposite side of the glass plate.\n\nAutochrome Lumière, a glass photograph created through this process, boasted a unique characteristic: it was composed of red, green, and blue dots. Although the Autochrome encountered challenges, such as the necessity of viewing it through a diascope stand and its susceptibility to fading under UV light, it marked a significant milestone in color photography history. The autochrome's dreamlike appearance and the concept of red, green, and blue dot arrangement laid the foundation for modern digital camera sensors, which utilize a similar mechanism to perceive colors.",
  "summary": "The first widespread form of color photography was the Autochrome Lumière – and it was made possible by potatoes",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}