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Color Theory

How do we describe quantitatively some particular color?

 

Any one of these systems will do...

"Primary" colors

Mixing inkIn school you learned about the primary colors Red, Yellow, and Blue. These are "primary" when you're mixing paint, ink, or anything that absorbs light.

Mixing inks of these three colors would result in this orange.


Hue, Saturation, Brightness (Value) - HSB or HSV

HSB color

RGB

When you're mixing stage lights, or colors from computer monitor pixels, or anything that emits light, it turns out to be easier to use Red Green and Blue as "primary" colors.

On a scale from 0 to 255, this color has

R=G=B=0 is black; R=G=B=255 is white;

Tri-chromacy

The common thread here is that color is a three-component quality. This is because we have three different kinds of cones in our retinas.

Cherries for colorblind folks

This is a recent development: almost all animals, even most mammals have just two color receptors, and would see something like the image at left.

This image was prepared using an image from fruitacresfarms.com using the Colorblind Web Page Filter.

Color Lore

Picking colors close to each other on the color wheel will create harmony--analogous colors




Picking colors opposite each other will create harmony--complementary colors
Complementary colors tend to increase each other's apparent saturation.



See: Color Matters- color theory for more examples

 




Experiment with