Color 2 Flashcards
Hue
is the identity of a color. When we say a color is blue, green, blue-green, or yellow, we are describing its hue.
The eye can recognize three characteristics of color—
hue, intensity, and value.
Hue does not refer to a color’s
lightness, darkness, or grayness.
Intensity, or Chroma,
refers to the purity of a
color—how close it is to being a single wavelength only. A saturated color—one that is absolutely free of all other colors—is rare, except in the laboratory. Most of the colors of common, everyday experience are a mixture of light of various wavelengths.
Value
is the lightness or darkness
of a color.
It indicates the amount of energy of the light making up the color.
Increasing the brightness of a hue by adding white creates a
tint.
Black added to the hue will decrease the brightness, creating a
shade.
A tone is a color consisting of a hue with
both white and black.
Primary colors are
any three colors that, when
mixed in proper proportions, will produce a wide range of colors. (The common belief that all colors can be produced by a mixture of three properly chosen “primary colors” is incorrect.)
There are two types of primary colors—
additive primaries (also called light, or optical, primaries) and subtractive, or pigment, primaries.
The additive primaries—the primary colors of light—are:
any three light beams of
equal intensity that will combine to make white light. Orange-red (commonly called red), green, and violet-blue (commonly called blue) are usually considered to be the additive primaries, since their combination gives the maximum range of colors. By varying the intensities of the primaries in different combinations, it is possible to produce virtually any color.
Subtractive, or Pigment, Primaries are:
The pigment colors are the
colors seen when one looks at an opaque object. They are the colors caused by partial absorption of white light. They are called subtractive because the colors they absorb are subtracted from the light they reflect.
The pigment colors that absorb the light of the additive primary colors are called the
pigment primaries. These are the primary colors of the artist and printer. They are magenta (a reddish-purple shade), which absorbs green; yellow, which absorbs violet-blue; and cyan (a greenish blue), which absorbs orange-red. When all three pigments are mixed in equal proportions, the result is black or near black.
Various mixtures of these pigment primaries will result in
almost any color desired. For example, if cyan pigment is mixed with yellow pigment, green is produced. The cyan pigment absorbs, or subtracts, red and yellow light. The yellow pigment subtracts blue and violet. The only color not subtracted is green.
Secondary Colors
These are colors that can be produced by a mixture of
equal parts of two primaries. A mixture of yellow and cyan pigments, for example, makes green; green is therefore a pigment secondary color. The primary colors of light are the secondary colors of pigment, and the primary colors of pigment are the secondary colors of light. All six colors—the primaries and secondaries—are seen in the spectrum or rainbow.
