Lab note 01 · Featured
the engine is open.
We published the math behind the read — white balance, chromatic adaptation, a continuous hue read — running live at /engine, sliders and all. The edge was never the algorithm.
Two tracks, one honest voice. Lab notes — the build, in public, for engineers and the science-curious. Field notes — the story and the spectrum, for everyone.
We published the math behind the read — white balance, chromatic adaptation, a continuous hue read — running live at /engine, sliders and all. The edge was never the algorithm.
Chasing a bug that turned every portrait red, we rediscovered color constancy — gray-world, Land's Retinex, and the fix that gives the spectrum back.
A $45 skin-conductance sensor, an Arduino, and Web Serial — the optional in-person instrument, planned in the open before we've run a single night.
I never have the perfect words — I just trust the feeling first. Our co-founder on intuition, memory, and building the whimsy into the light.
I've never actually had my aura read — I only ever saw the pictures, in cities I wasn't in. That gap is the whole reason aura.refract exists.
Our CEO on trading boxes for canvases — stewardship, culture, and how fashion's outside transformation became Aura's inside one.
A short, defensive piece about what we are and what we aren't. Because someone always asks.
Aura photography had a great two years. Here's why the next two won't look like the last.
If you refract twice and get two different bands — congrats, you're alive. A piece on why the read changes, and why that's the point.
One field note a month. Same voice. No spam.