Week 3 Flashcards
What is color?
- Without light there is no color
- Objects don’t have color on their own
- Objects possess properties that reflect or
absorb light waves - Every living thing has its own internal pigmentation
-Each object reflects its own colour
and absorbs all others from the light
it is reflecting
What are the 2 types of cells of the eye in the retina?
- Cones
- Rods
What do rod cells do?
Record lightness and darkness (value?)
Has a blockey shape
What do cone cells do?
Distinguish between hues (colors)
Has a rounded, pointed shape
Is Color physical or sensory?
- Color is sensory, not physical, experience.
- It cannot be touched or felt, except psychologically
Who invented the color wheel?
- Sir Isaac Newton (law of gravity)
- in 1660s, experimented with glass prisms
- Sunlight is made up of colour
- Arranged the spectrum band into a circle to study the colours (colour wheel)
What are the 7 colors on Newton’s Optical spectrum?
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet
What is a color wheel?
visual method for charting colors for reference.
What are primary colors?
The most basic and purest of color, you can’t mix 2 colors to get them.
E.g. red, blue, yellow
primary + primary = ?
secondary
primary + secondary = ?
tertiary
What are the primary colors in light mixture (aka. additive)
red-orange, green, blue-violet (RGB)
What are the primary colors in pigment mixture (aka. subtractive)
red, blue, yellow (RBY)
What are the primary colors in offset printing?
cyan, magenta, yellow, black (CMYK)
Define Additive color
- Additive colour is viewed directly as light. White is produced when pixels are at maximum intensity and appear to overlap.
- when all the colors overlap you get white
- it’s RGB
- What we seen on a screen, graphics, pixels
Define Subtractive color
- Subtractive colour is viewed as a reflection off a surface. All light waves except those containing the colour we see are subtracted by a surface
- When colors overlapp you get black
- CYMK
Define Complimentary colors
Are opposite to each other
e.g. red and green
Define Analogue colors
Adjacent to each other
e.g. green-blue and blue
Define Discordant colors
farther apart but not directly across from one another. Kinda like Complimentary colors but not exactly.
e.g. purple and green
Qualities of complementary colors
- When placed next to each other, their intensity is heightened
- When mixed, they create a neutral gray
Qualities of analogue color
- Tend to create harmony
Qualities of discordant colors
- Tend to create instability and movement
What are the 2 components of color
Hue
Value
Define Shade
hue by adding black
Define tint
hue by adding white
Achromatic (relates to value)
mixtures of blacks and whites (gray-scale)
Monochromatic (relates to value)
shades and tints of a value
Define Hue
purest state of a color
Define Value
lightness or darkness of a color
What are the 3 type/categories of primary color?
light mixture, pigment mixture, offset printing
Define Triadic Harmonies
Set of 3 colors on the color wheel that are evenly spaced between one another ( forming a triangle)
e. g. red, blue and yellow
e. g. green, orange and purple
Define Split Complementary
Set of 3 colors that are similar to Triadic Harmony but different.
Take a color, look at it’s complement, and then the 2 color on either side of the complement.
E.g. red, blue, green
Define intensity/saturation
- brightness or dullness of a color
- A colour in its pure state is at its brightest
What are 3 days of decreasing a colors purity/saturation?
- diluting
- adding grey
- adding colors complement
Define temperature in terms of color
warmth or coolness of a color
- red, orange, and yellow are warm
- blue, green and violet are cool
Some colors seem to advance (pop out more) while others seem to recede. What colors advance?
- warm colors advance
- cool colors recede (when next to reds and such)
Define Perceptual Relativity
Color can be perceived differently depending on its surrounding colors
What is the Bezold Effect?
Change in a single color can substantially alter our perception of an entire pattern
e.g. that checkerboard with the 2 different grey but they’re the same grey and there’s a green cylinder.
Define Opponent Theory
- cones can register only one color in a complementary pair at a time
- there’s visual overload at the edges
- kinda feels like there’s this glow feeling
Qualities of proportions in relation to color
changing proportions alters the overall relationship of colors
How can you use color?
- Depict things as they are
- E.g. grass is green
- Create perception of volume and depth
- Group elements and concepts
- Emphasize them
- Colour code
- Stimulate a range of memories and expectations (and emotions)
- Convey abstract or symbolic ideas
and meanings
What are intrinsic qualities of color
Colors have symbolic associations
- Red = warm and energetic
- blue = tranquil and cool
Choice of colors can impact the moods of designs and how people respond to them
Define process color separation
in commercial printing, used for reproduction of color photographs. The
various hues are created by superimposition of halftone dots of the
process colors: cyan (a greenish blue), magenta (a purplish red), yellow, and black.
Define color separation
the process of creating separate negatives and plates for each color of ink (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) that will be used in the publication.
- The 4 color drums concept
Define Offset printing
for high-volume reproduction – utilizes three rotating drums:
1) plate cylinder,
2) a (rubber) blanket cylinder
3) impression cylinder.
The printing plate is wrapped around the plate cylinder (1), inked and dampened. The plate image is transferred, or offset, onto the blanket cylinder (2). Paper passes between the blanket cylinder (2) and the impression cylinder (3), and the image is transferred onto the paper.
Define spot color separation
- for offset printing, separation of solid premixed ink colors (for example, green, brown, light blue, etc.) - Doesn't use CYMK - generally 1-3 colors and just use tints of that color
Define Duotone
a halftone image printed with two colors, one dark and the other light.
The same photograph is halftoned twice
How many spot colors are used to make a duotone
2
Define PMS (Pantone Matching System)
a standard color matching system used by printers and graphic designers for inks, papers, and other materials. A PMS color is a standard color defined by percentage mixtures of different primary inks.
Define Screen (tint)
in graphic arts, a uniform dotted fill pattern,
described in percentage (for example, 50 percent screen).
Define color gamut
color space, the full selection of colors achievable by any single device on the reproduction chain.
Colors for what u see on the monitor, CYMK and PANTONE can overlap
Qualities of spot colors that make it different from process colors
- A spot color is a special premixed ink that is used instead of, or in addition to, CMYK process inks
- Requires its own printing plate on a printing press
- Use spot color when few colors are specified and/or color accuracy is critical
- Spot color inks can accurately reproduce colors that are outside the gamut of process colors
Qualities of spot colors
- A spot color is a special premixed ink that is used instead of, or in addition to, CMYK process inks
- Requires its own printing plate on a printing press
- Use spot color when few colors are specified and/or color accuracy is critical
- Spot color inks can accurately reproduce colors that are outside the gamut of process colors
Qualities of a process color
- A process color is printed using a combination of four standard process inks: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK)
- Use process colors when a job requires so many colors that using individual spot inks would be expensive or impractical, as when
printing color photographs
Accessibility Facts
Colour-blindness or colour vision deficiency
- Red/green colour blindness most common
- Blue/yellow colour blindness exists but rare
- Occurs in about 8-12% of males of European descent
- 1/2 of 1% of females
- Total colour blindness is extremely rare
- No treatment
- About 6-10% of any viewing audience suffers from some kind of colour blindness
Because of color blind things be mind of accessibility and…
- careful when using reds and greens
- Color codes
- text shadow
- Contrast of colours helps distinguish areas of different colours as opposed to the colours themselves
- Exaggerate the contrast of foreground/background, or adjacent colors
- avoid contrasting colors of similar hues, analogous colors
