I've thought about that some. It's interesting. However, I would guess that the gels you are referring to are just saturated in some hue. most colors are not super saturated in the world, especially compared to the objects around us and the white
point.
The reason I don't think that
fluorescent pigments are really at
play in
gel design is because the florescent component of the radiation (light is radiation) would be isotropic. It would emit from the
gel in all directions, kind of bad news for an industry where we use "spot" lights. Another reason that they wouldn't work very well is that the amount of radiation that the
fluorescent dyes are emitting would be very small compared to the amount transmitting through the
gel. It would have little or no observable
effect on the color of the beam.
Fluorescent dyes and pigments are effective in materials because most materials aren't super reflective so the
fluorescent component has a good chance to shine through. And lastly, gels are, typically, meant to be used in 3200K sources, like our trusty source4s. These lamps have very very little short wavelength component that would be capable of exciting the
fluorescent reaction.
It definitely occurred to me as a possibility. And actually, there is another GOOD argument for the usage of
fluorescent pigments in a
gel. Like it or not, the way the
gel looks backed by that little white piece of paper in the
book has a strong influence on the gels we like. We don't always judge gels in the light lab or through a real light source. And backed by that white piece of paper the
fluorescent pigments could be effective in making me think some green
gel was SUPER green.