eirenical

Open the “apps” section in your settings (it’s usually at the very bottom), go to photos and scroll until you see “Enhanced Visual Search” and then turn that shit off. Then go to “Privacy and Security”, scroll until you see “Analytics & Improvements”, and turn off “Improve Siri & Dictation” as well.

​I am an artist with hundreds upon hundreds of my artworks in my photo album. I also have plenty of photos with not only my own face, but the faces of my friends and my family. I do not appreciate that being used to train AI without my consent, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same for others too.

Oh! I love this question because I love a good list of sources, but I want to clarify that the items I'm mentioning are in English and aren't cinematography focused or even centered on color theory. The sources fall more on the visual storytelling and color psychology side, but hopefully they will still help. Also, although I'm writing about visuals, I operate in the realm of text, so these ten sources are textual in nature, but some do include videos:

If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die: The Power of Color in Visual Storytelling

Although it came out in 2005, and some of the scientific studies Bellantoni mentions are outdated, this is no way lowers the value of this book. Bellantoni, a color theorist, uses accessible language and plenty of examples from well-known movies to easily explain visual rhetoric. Ask anyone who studies colors in visual media, and eight times out of ten, this is the go-to book. Many public libraries have this book, and I know the Internet Archive does as well.

Color Theory for Dummies

If the previous book was easy to comprehend, this is even easier! This is one of the newer books on my list since it just came out in 2022. The first three parts of the book are useful for understanding color theory and color psychology, so I think those parts would be more helpful to someone just starting out in the field. Eric Hibit, a visual artist, wrote the book, so part four and five are more focused on what an artist would need to know about colors, and although they are great because they are coming from an expert in the field, they are less relevant to a person who is only reading it for theory rather than application.

The Psychology of Color in Film (with examples)

No Film School is a good website for people who want to understand any aspect of filmmaking from the best camera for certain shots to setting up a scene to build tension. This particular piece is about how filmmakers can use color psychology in their work to evoke emotions, and although it is brief, it has multiple embedded links and two videos that do a fantastic job of highlighting what color psychology looks like in visual media.

Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America

This book isn't about visual storytelling, but Jo B. Paoletti is a dress historian whose work focuses on fashion, clothing trends, and gender studies, so I included her because sometimes we get so involved in the art aspect of the colors that we miss the real-world implications of them. Her 2012 book serves as an anchor to remind us that these visuals aren't just for aesthetics but have cultural connections that go beyond the screen. Sometimes, it helps for us to see the bigger stereotype picture.

The Meaning of Colors in Horror

I wanted to offer something spooky since I personally tend to stay away from los espookys, and Slow Burn Horror is the perfect website for just that! Shannon Lewis is a Mexican-American writer who loves the horror genre. She and her fellow horror enthusiasts created this website to showcase different aspects of horror, and she specifically writes about color symbolism in horror films. Because Lewis is a writer, the way she presents each color is engaging, and her knowledge of the genre makes the connections between the technical elements and their emotional impacts clear to anyone reading her work.

The Visual Story: Creating Visual Structure of Film, TV, and Digital Media

A textbook written by Bruce Block, who is a professor of Cinematic Arts & Design, is a good general resource for all things regarding visual storytelling. Only chapter six deals with colors, but the book, which released its third edition in 2020, covers a solid range of topics for people interested in learning more about creating visual structures or simply understanding them better.

Interaction of Color

This book is a classic in the color theory field published in 1963 by Josef Albers, a revered Yale professor in the department of design, and it had its 50th-anniversary edition released in 2013. It's not my favorite, simply because I'm not a color theory person and the writing style feels more speech-like, but my color theory buddies swear by this book, and as far as color theory books go, this one is easily the best.

Color History Books

There are several table books out in the wild about colors that have really pretty pictures and quick quirky facts about them, but these three books aren't those and never want to be. They are doing far more heavy lifting in regards to research, but much like Pink and Blue, they are showing how color as we know it today has evolved from centuries of influence to shape how we interpret our world. They aren't what you asked for, but I included them because I think it's good to mix up the fun with the educational:

On Color - David Kastan (2018), a Yale English professor, with the support of a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, unpacks how color exists in our eyes and our brains. It's not really a history book nor a science book, so I would consider it more about the rhetoric of color and how we talk about it/them.

The Secret Lives of Color - Kassia St. Clair (2017) is a historian but this isn't a boring stiff history book. It's the gossip column of the color wheel and each shade has a scandal, a tragedy, or a love story hidden in its history. Also, the edges of the pages are colored, so it's a beautiful book too!

The World According to Color - James Fox (2021) makes documentaries for BBC in his spare time, but his day gig is art historian, so his book journeys from ancient caves to modern screens to trace how colors shaped empires, religions, and the way we see everything.

Yang Yang as Zhan Zhao, Zhang Ruonan as Huo Linglong and Alen Fang as Bai Yutang in ZHAN ZHAO ADVENTURES (2026)

Have some more rock star au, sleepy soft Li Lianhua:

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Back at A’Fei’s house, they end up on the couch, Li Lianhua holding a mug of tea—from a bag, but the box had been new, and a brand of reliable quality, quite a step up—while A’Fei flips through channels. The show A’Fei finds is an old wuxia series, one he half-remembers, takes half his brain, but the score is good even if the story is weak.

For a long time, tumblr had tags and no other search function. You wanted to find a post that wasn't tagged, you had to go to Google and type in your query and add "site:tumblr.com" and hope for the best.

As it is now, that method is STILL better than our native search function most of the time, but the quality of tumblr's native search function isn't really what's important here, what's relevant is how they implemented it.

See, the search bar in the upper left corner of the site - you used to type in something there, and it would take you to posts tagged with whatever you searched. Then, one day, they quietly rolled out an update that instead brought you to a search page that pulled up nearly every post that even mentioned your search term.

This...did not mesh well with the site culture.

Because, see, we had an etiquette guideline - do not post your negativity in the public tags. Why? Because people go into the public tags to find content about things they LIKE. Posting hate in a public tag was basically seen as being a raging dramamongering pissbaby troll LOOKING to start a fight over petty nonsense.

So imagine, suddenly, you log in one day, and someone's sending you anons angry about you allegedly posting hate in the tags, when you have NEVER done so. You use what you THINK is the tag search function to prove it, and - what the hell? Your UNTAGGED post about how annoyed you are with your notp...is appearing there???

So people started censoring things like that. Usually not because we all think the thing we're complaining about is profane (though sometimes it does get a giggle to think of it as such), but to keep it from showing up when people are searching for what they love and to prevent pointless drama. To avoid looking like some asshole troll going onto a fan forum specifically for The Blorbo Show and making a thread entitled "THE BLORBO SHOW SUXXX AND YOU ALL SUCK FOR LIKING IT!!"

And now it's just part of our site culture, for both peacekeeping reasons and petty glee.