Color has no physical substances

Without light there is no color.

The eye is a sense organ that is adapted to receive light. The retina of the eye receives a stimulus—the
energy signal—and transmits it to the brain, where it is identified as color.

Light travels at the same speed

Waves of light energy are emitted at different distances apart, or frequencies.

380 nm to about 720 nm.

Red is the longest visible wavelength (720 nm), followed in order by orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo,
and violet, the shortest visible wavelength (380 nm).

Mixing two of the primary colors of light produces a new color.

Blue and green wavelengths combined produce cyan (blue-green).

Red and blue wavelengths combined produce magenta (a blue-red, or red-violet), and green and red
wavelengths combined produce yellow.

Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the secondary colors of light.

White or colored light seen as a result of a combination of wavelengths is called an additive mixture

Color vision is experienced in two different ways: either as light directly from a light source, or as light
reflected from an object.

Transmission: the material allows light to pass through, as through glass.

Absorption: the material soaks up light reaching it like a sponge, and the light is lost as visible. It can no
longer be seen.

* Reflection, or scattering: light reaching a material bounces off it, changing direction.

If all of the light reaching an object is either reflected or absorbed, the object is opaque

If all (or nearly all) of the light reaching an object or material is transmitted, that object is transparent.
Window glass is an example of transparent material.

When some of the light reaching an object or material is transmitted and some is reflected, the object is
translucent.

Moonlight is a familiar form of indirect light. The moon is luminous: it reflects light but does not emit its
own energy. Its surface reflects the light of the sun to the earth.

The threshold of color vision is the point at which a difference between two similar hues can no longer
be discriminated.

One way to characterize differences between color samples is in intervals. An interval is a step of change
between visual sensations. An individual’s threshold establishes the single interval: the point at which a
detectable middle step can no longer be inserted between two close colors.
The occurrence of a sensation is immediately followed by perception. Perception is the critical
connection between human beings and their environment.

Color plays an important, but secondary, role in recognition.

Unlike a sensation, a perception cannot be measured. It can only be described.

Impressionable or associative colors evoke imagery without symbolic meaning. Grayed blue-greens may
call to mind the icy cold of a winter sea, or a riot of brilliant greens a tropical forest. Steel gray suggests
hi-tech; palest pastels a new baby.

Yellow tilted to orange may suggest warmth and richness, while yellow tilted to green suggests illness.
Red is associated with passion of all kinds.

Three qualities of color are already familiar:

Hue: the name of the color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, or violet

Value: the relative lightness or darkness of a color

Saturation or chroma: the hue-intensity or brilliance of a sample, its dullness or vividness

Chromatic: Having hue

Achromatic: Without hue

Polychromatic: Having many hues

Monochromatic: Having one hue only

The artists’ spectrum is a circle that illustrates hues in their natural (spectral) order. The spectrum of
visible light (additive color) is linear, moving from short wavelengths of light (violet) to long ones (red),
and the order of its colors is fixed. The artists’ spectrum is also fixed in its order of colors, but it has six
hues instead of seven, and they are presented as a continuous circle, with violet forming a bridge
between red and blue. The artists’ spectrum is also called the color circle or color wheel.

Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors of the artists’ spectrum. They are the simplest hues.

The primary colors are the most different from each other because they have no elements in common.
All colors on the artists’ spectrum are mixed visually from the primaries red, yellow, and blue.

Green, orange, and violet are the secondary colors of the artists’ spectrum. Each secondary color is an
even interval, or visual midpoint, between two primary colors: Green is the middle mix of blue and
yellow. Orange is the middle mix of red and yellow. Violet is the middle mix of blue and red.

Yellow-orange, red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet, blue-green, and yellow-green are intermediate colors.
They are the midpoints between the primary and secondary hues. Many times these colors are referred
to, incorrectly, as tertiary colors.
Saturated colors are also called pure colors or full colors. They are at maximum chroma.

A saturated hue is made up of a single primary color or two primaries in some mix or proportion, but
never includes a third primary. A saturated hue does not contain black, white, or gray.

Analogous color groupings contain two primary colors but never the third.

Complementary colors are hues that are opposite one another on the artists’ spectrum. Together, the
two are called complements or a complementary pair. The basic complementary pairs of the artists’
spectrum are:

Red and green

Yellow and violet

Blue and orange

Another way to characterize complements is to say that they are a pair of colors that, when mixed,
produce a sample of no discernable hue. These are the tertiary colors.

Tertiary colors are an enormous, almost limitless class of colors. Tertiary means “of the third rank.”1
Tertiary colors are defined as “gray or brown, a mixture of two secondaries,” which can be said more
simply as “gray or brown, a mixture of three primaries.”

Black and white are achromatic. They are without hue.

True grays, or mixtures of black and white, are also achromatic. Subtractive colorants for gray also
contain a suggestion of hue.

Value refers to relative light and dark in a sample.

Hue is circular and continuous, but value is linear and progressive.

Value is first and most easily understood as a series of steps from black to white. White is the highest
possible value. Black is the lowest possible value.

A hue that is luminous reflects a great deal of light, appears light, and is high in value. A nonluminous
hue absorbs light, is dark, and is low in value

A tint is a hue that has been made lighter. A shade is a hue has been made darker.
Saturation and chroma refer to hue intensity, or the amount of pure color in a sample. A
saturated color is a color at its fullest expression of hue. It is a color at maximum chroma
One way to change the saturation of a hue without changing its value is to dilute it with a gray
of equal value.
Adding the complement to a color to reduce its saturation is a time-honored technique in
subtractive media
Harmony is the happy condition that follows when two or more different things are sensed
together as a single, pleasing experience. Harmony is perceived as complete, continuous, and
natural

Color harmony occurs when two or more colors are sensed together as a single, pleasing,
collective impression. Harmony requires a grouping of elements.
Color effects fall into two broad categories. The first is color harmony, the traditional idea of
beauty or pleasingness in color combinations. The “pleasing joint effect of two or more colors”
may be a closer definition of color harmony. The second is visual impact: the effect of color
choices and combinations on the visual force of a design or image.

Complementary colors are opposite each other on the color wheel. Red and green, orange and
blue, and yellow and purple are examples of complementary colors
This scheme consists of three colors that form an equilateral triangle on the color wheel. An
example of this would be blue-violet, red-orange, and yellow-green.
Four colors that form a square or a rectangle on the color wheel create a tetradic color scheme.
This color scheme includes two pairs of complementary colors, such as orange and blue and
yellow-orange and blue-violet. This is also known as a “double-complementary” color scheme.
Analogous colors are adjacent (or close) to each other on the color wheel. . Examples of tight
analogous color schemes would be red, red-orange, and orange; or blue-violet, blue, and blue-
green. A loose analogous scheme would be blue, violet, and red.

This scheme includes a main color and a color on each side of its complementary color. An
example of this would be red, yellow-green, and blue-green.
Generally, yellows, oranges, and reds are considered warm, whereas greens, blues, and purples
are considered cool.
Tinting strength refers to the relative quantity of a color needed to produce a perceptible
difference when mixed into another color.
Most yellows, for example, have little tinting strength. Adding one-half cup of yellow paint to
one-half cup of green paint causes little change in the green. But a teaspoon of green added to
a cup of yellow changes yellow to yellow-green at once.
The process color primaries are cyan (blue-green), magenta (red-blue), and yellow. Magenta is
also called process red; cyan, process blue; and yellow, process yellow. Process color, or CMYK
(Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and blacK) printing is the most familiar and universally available
printing process.