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Ok, after a quick smoke and some coffee, I'd like to clarify a couple of points to our American friends here.
First, this explanation is based off of principles taught to military forces around the world, under the subject "Why Things are Seen". Rather than explain the entire subject matter here, I suggest you google the term for reference.
Our eyes are trained to look for patterns to make sense out of what we see. Camouflage relies on breaking up the shape of man or man-made objects to prevent them human eyes from picking them out of the environment.
One reason why things are seen is SHAPE. Camouflage attempts to mask the SHAPE by breaking up recognizeable patterns.
Another reason things are seen is COLOR. Camouflage uses concealment properties (not the same thing as camouflage) to attempt to present COLORS that blend with the environment, or at the very least, do not stand out in the environment.
The expression "black is not a natural color" has been used to discredit many camouflage patterns, but this is incorrect. Anything in a single color that fails to break up the human form will be detected by a human being.
All things reflect light and cast shadows. Anything that does not cast shadows appears to be a solid pattern, and thus becomes more visible as the eye looks for the human form.
The fact that ACU contains no black does not make it an optimum choice for camouflage and concealment. This is because the COLOR doesn't typically match the environment, and looks out of place. Something that looks out of place is readily detectable by the human eye.
Marpat and Cadpat work by making something look like nothing. That doesn't mean you won't see an individual in Cadpat or Marpat if the environment doesnt support the concealment properties of the material, or if the individual is detected through any of the other reasons things are seen such as silhouette, surface, sighting, spacing or movement or sound.
It works when the other factors are minimized, such as a soldier lying prone in a bush with shiny skin covered.
Again, the two most IMPORTANT aspects of why things are seen are COLOR and SHAPE.
Therefore, add a Black LBV to the above mentioned soldier and you decrease the overall camouflage and concealment by introducing recognizeable patterns to an otherwise succesfully disrupted human form; the shoulder straps are straight black lines.
See where I'm going here? It's not the color, its the color AND the shape. If someone spots your boot, it's not because they saw a black speck in the forest. It's because they saw a black speck which their mind translated into the recognizeable shape of a human foot. Taking that same boot and adding a few "tiger stripes" of green paint would have probably caused the eye to notice the black, find no immediate connection with a recognizeable human form, and pass over it unprocessed.
When you're hunting, you use these principles to your advantage. The prey does not know the rules of why things are seen, and doesn't generally care. You can spot a black bear in the underbrush because it's black and bear shaped. You can equally spot a brown bear in a green forest because it's not well blended to it's environment at the time you're looking for it.
Hunting people is different. People are aware of these things. The Viet Cong wore black, and were highly sucessful in the jungles of Vietnam against US forces in greens and advanced tiger-stripe designs, because they used vegitation to break up their shape. Remember, color on it's own does nothing without shape to make it something recognizeable.
Some colors will stand out and force you to take notice; things like dayglow orange, bright red, etc. Black is in effect an absence of light reflecting properties, so it is not noticed the same way by the human eye without the addition of other factors to help the eye and brain make sense of what it's seeing. There are other colors that exhibit this phenomena, which is to absorb light that our brain uses to trigger a connection with a man made item. In effect, they don't stand out. Examples include anything in the "earth tones", maroon, even some shades of blue.
Ok, to wrap up here.
The absence of the color black in a pattern doesn't make it invisible. Likewise, addition of the color black in a pattern doesn't make it stand out.
ACU has no black, but the lighter tones are not condusive to many natural environments and therefore it fails the color test. Once you've failed the color test, your brain will go out of it's way to make sense out of something.
Multicam is different; it is made up entirely of those colors that are passively ignored by the brain. Again, that doesn't make it invisible. Movement, Shape, Surface etc all play a part in the overall picture.
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