Pigment

A pigment is a powder used to add color or change

visual appearance. Pigments are completely or nearly
insoluble and chemically unreactive in water or another
medium; in contrast, dyes are colored substances
which are soluble or go into solution at some stage in
their use.[1][2] Dyes are often organic compounds
whereas pigments are often inorganic. Pigments of
prehistoric and historic value include ochre, charcoal,
and lapis lazuli.

Economic impact
Pigments for sale at a market stall in Goa, India
In 2006, around 7.4 million tons of inorganic, organic,
and special pigments were marketed worldwide.[3]
According to an April 2018 report by Bloomberg Businessweek, the estimated value of the pigment industry
globally is $30 billion. The value of titanium dioxide – used to enhance the white brightness of many
products – was placed at $13.2 billion per year, while the color Ferrari red is valued at $300 million each
year.[4]

Physical principles
Like all materials, the color of pigments arises because they absorb
only certain wavelengths of visible light. The bonding properties of
the material determine the wavelength and efficiency of light
absorption.[5] Light of other wavelengths are reflected or scattered.
The reflected light spectrum defines the color that we observe.

The appearance of pigments is sensitive to the source light. Sunlight

has a high color temperature and a fairly uniform spectrum. A wide variety of wavelengths
Sunlight is considered a standard for white light. Artificial light (colors) encounter a pigment. This
pigment absorbs red and green light,
sources are less uniform.
but reflects blue—giving the
Color spaces used to represent colors numerically must specify their substance a blue-colored
appearance.
light source. Lab color measurements, unless otherwise noted,
assume that the measurement was recorded under a D65 light
source, or "Daylight 6500 K", which is roughly the color temperature of sunlight.

Other properties of a color, such as its saturation or lightness, may be determined by the other substances
that accompany pigments. Binders and fillers can affect the color.

History
Minerals have been used as colorants
since prehistoric times.[6] Early
humans used paint for aesthetic
purposes such as body decoration.
Pigments and paint grinding equipment
believed to be between 350,000 and
400,000 years old have been reported
in a cave at Twin Rivers, near Lusaka, Sunlight encounters Rosco R80 "Primary Blue" pigment. The
Zambia. Ochre, iron oxide, was the product of the source spectrum and the reflectance spectrum of the
[7]
first color of paint. A favored blue pigment results in the final spectrum, and the appearance of blue.
pigment was derived from lapis lazuli.
Pigments based on minerals and clays
often bear the name of the city or region where they were originally mined. Raw sienna and burnt sienna
came from Siena, Italy, while raw umber and burnt umber came from Umbria. These pigments were among
the easiest to synthesize, and chemists created modern colors based on the originals. These were more
consistent than colors mined from the original ore bodies, but the place names remained. Also found in
many Paleolithic and Neolithic cave paintings are Red Ochre, anhydrous Fe2 O3 , and the hydrated Yellow
Ochre (Fe2 O3 .H2 O).[8] Charcoal—or carbon black—has also been used as a black pigment since
prehistoric times.[8]

The first known synthetic pigment was Egyptian blue, which is first attested on an alabaster bowl in Egypt
dated to Naqada III (circa 3250 BC).[9][10] Egyptian blue (blue frit), calcium copper silicate CaCuSi4 O10 ,
made by heating a mixture of quartz sand, lime, a flux and a copper source, such as malachite.[11] Already
invented in the Predynastic Period of Egypt, its use became widespread by the 4th Dynasty.[12] It was the
blue pigment par excellence of Roman antiquity; its art technological traces vanished in the course of the
Middle Ages until its rediscovery in the context of the Egyptian campaign and the excavations in Pompeii
and Herculaneum.[13] Later premodern synthetic pigments include white lead (basic lead carbonate,
(PbCO3 )2 Pb(OH)2 ),[14] vermilion, verdigris, and lead-tin yellow. Vermilion, a mercury sulfide, was
originally made by grinding a powder of natural cinnabar. From the 17th century on, it was also synthesized
from the elements.[15] It was favored by old masters such as Titian. Indian yellow was once produced by
collecting the urine of cattle that had been fed only mango leaves.[16] Dutch and Flemish painters of the
17th and 18th centuries favored it for its luminescent qualities, and often used it to represent sunlight. Since
mango leaves are nutritionally inadequate for cattle, the practice of harvesting Indian yellow was eventually
declared to be inhumane.[16] Modern hues of Indian yellow are made from synthetic pigments. Vermillion
has been partially replaced in by cadmium reds.

Because of the cost of lapis lazuli, substitutes were often used. Prussian blue, the oldest modern synthetic
pigment, was discovered by accident in 1704.[17] By the early 19th century, synthetic and metallic blue
pigments included French ultramarine, a synthetic form of lapis lazuli. Ultramarine was manufactured by
treating aluminium silicate with sulfur. Various forms of cobalt blue and Cerulean blue were also
introduced. In the early 20th century, Phthalo Blue, a synthetic metallo-organic pigment was prepared. At
the same time, Royal Blue, another name once given to tints produced from lapis lazuli, has evolved to
signify a much lighter and brighter color, and is usually mixed from Phthalo Blue and titanium dioxide, or
from inexpensive synthetic blue dyes.
The discovery in 1856 of mauveine, the first aniline dyes, was a forerunner for the development of
hundreds of synthetic dyes and pigments like azo and diazo compounds. These dyes ushered in the
flourishing of organic chemistry, including systematic designs of colorants. The development of organic
chemistry diminished the dependence on inorganic pigments.[18]

Paintings illustrating advances in pigments

The Milkmaid by Johannes
Vermeer (c. 1658). Vermeer
was lavish in his choice of
expensive pigments, including
lead-tin yellow, natural
ultramarine, and madder lake,
as shown in the vibrant
painting.[19]
Titian used the historic pigment
vermilion to create the reds in
the oil painting of Assunta,
completed c. 1518.
Miracle of the Slave by
Tintoretto (c. 1548). The son of
a master dyer, Tintoretto used
Carmine Red Lake pigment,
derived from the cochineal
insect, to achieve dramatic
color effects.

Self Portrait by Paul Cézanne.

Working in the late 19th
century, Cézanne had a much
broader palette of colors than
his predecessors.

Manufacturing and industrial standards

Before the development of synthetic pigments, and the refinement of techniques for extracting mineral
pigments, batches of color were often inconsistent. With the development of a modern color industry,
manufacturers and professionals have cooperated to create international standards for identifying,
producing, measuring, and testing colors.
First published in 1905, the Munsell color system became the
foundation for a series of color models, providing objective
methods for the measurement of color. The Munsell system
describes a color in three dimensions, hue, value (lightness), and
chroma (color purity), where chroma is the difference from gray at a
given hue and value.

By the middle 20th century, standardized methods for pigment

chemistry were available, part of an international movement to
create such standards in industry. The International Organization for
Natural ultramarine pigment in
Standardization (ISO) develops technical standards for the powdered form
manufacture of pigments and dyes. ISO standards define various
industrial and chemical properties, and how to test for them. The
principal ISO standards that relate to all pigments are as follows:

ISO-787 General methods of test for pigments and

extenders.
ISO-8780 Methods of dispersion for assessment of
dispersion characteristics.
Other ISO standards pertain to particular classes or categories of
pigments, based on their chemical composition, such as ultramarine
pigments, titanium dioxide, iron oxide pigments, and so forth. Synthetic ultramarine pigment is
chemically identical to natural
Many manufacturers of paints, inks, textiles, plastics, and colors ultramarine
have voluntarily adopted the Colour Index International (CII) as a
standard for identifying the pigments that they use in manufacturing
particular colors. First published in 1925—and now published jointly on the web by the Society of Dyers
and Colourists (United Kingdom) and the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (US)—
this index is recognized internationally as the authoritative reference on colorants. It encompasses more than
27,000 products under more than 13,000 generic color index names.

In the CII schema, each pigment has a generic index number that identifies it chemically, regardless of
proprietary and historic names. For example, Phthalocyanine Blue BN has been known by a variety of
generic and proprietary names since its discovery in the 1930s. In much of Europe, phthalocyanine blue is
better known as Helio Blue, or by a proprietary name such as Winsor Blue. An American paint
manufacturer, Grumbacher, registered an alternate spelling (Thanos Blue) as a trademark. Colour Index
International resolves all these conflicting historic, generic, and proprietary names so that manufacturers and
consumers can identify the pigment (or dye) used in a particular color product. In the CII, all
phthalocyanine blue pigments are designated by a generic color index number as either PB15 or PB16,
short for pigment blue 15 and pigment blue 16; these two numbers reflect slight variations in molecular
structure, which produce a slightly more greenish or reddish blue.

Figures of merit
The following are some of the attributes of pigments that determine their suitability for particular
manufacturing processes and applications:

Lightfastness and sensitivity for damage from ultraviolet light

 Heat stability
Toxicity
Tinting strength
Staining
Dispersion (which can be measured with a Hegman gauge)
Opacity or transparency
Resistance to alkalis and acids
Reactions and interactions between pigments

Swatches
Swatches are used to communicate colors accurately. The types of swatches are dictated by the media, i.e.,
printing, computers, plastics, and textiles. Generally, the medium that offers the broadest gamut of color
shades is widely used across diverse media.

Printed swatches
Reference standards are provided by printed swatches of color shades. PANTONE, RAL, Munsell, etc. are
widely used standards of color communication across diverse media like printing, plastics, and textiles.

Plastic swatches
Companies manufacturing color masterbatches and pigments for plastics offer plastic swatches in injection
molded color chips. These color chips are supplied to the designer or customer to choose and select the
color for their specific plastic products.

Plastic swatches are available in various special effects like pearl, metallic, fluorescent, sparkle, mosaic etc.
However, these effects are difficult to replicate on other media like print and computer display. Plastic
swatches have been created by 3D modelling to including various special effects.

Computer swatches
The appearance of pigments in natural light is difficult to replicate on a computer display. Approximations
are required. The Munsell Color System provides an objective measure of color in three dimensions: hue,
value (or lightness), and chroma. Computer displays in general fail to show the true chroma of many
pigments, but the hue and lightness can be reproduced with relative accuracy. However, when the gamma
of a computer display deviates from the reference value, the hue is also systematically biased.

The following approximations assume a display device at gamma 2.2, using the sRGB color space. The
further a display device deviates from these standards, the less accurate these swatches will be.[20] Swatches
are based on the average measurements of several lots of single-pigment watercolor paints, converted from
Lab color space to sRGB color space for viewing on a computer display. The appearance of a pigment may
depend on the brand and even the batch. Furthermore, pigments have inherently complex reflectance
spectra that will render their color appearance[21] greatly different depending on the spectrum of the source
illumination, a property called metamerism. Averaged measurements of pigment samples will only yield
approximations of their true appearance under a specific source of illumination. Computer display systems
use a technique called chromatic adaptation transforms[22] to emulate the correlated color temperature of
illumination sources, and cannot perfectly reproduce the intricate spectral combinations originally seen. In
many cases, the perceived color of a pigment falls outside of the gamut of computer displays and a method
called gamut mapping is used to approximate the true appearance. Gamut mapping trades off any one of
lightness, hue, or saturation accuracy to render the color on screen, depending on the priority chosen in the
conversion's ICC rendering intent.

#990024 PR106 – #FFB02E

#E34234

Tyrian red Vermilion (genuine) Indian yellow

PB29 –
#003BAF PB27 –
#0B3E66
Ultramarine
Prussian blue
blue

Biological pigments
In biology, a pigment is any colored material of plant or animal cells. Many biological structures, such as
skin, eyes, fur, and hair contain pigments (such as melanin). Animal skin coloration often comes about
through specialized cells called chromatophores, which animals such as the octopus and chameleon can
control to vary the animal's color. Many conditions affect the levels or nature of pigments in plant, animal,
some protista, or fungus cells. For instance, the disorder called albinism affects the level of melanin
production in animals.

Pigmentation in organisms serves many biological purposes, including camouflage, mimicry, aposematism
(warning), sexual selection and other forms of signalling, photosynthesis (in plants), and basic physical
purposes such as protection from sunburn.

Pigment color differs from structural color in that pigment color is the same for all viewing angles, whereas
structural color is the result of selective reflection or iridescence, usually because of multilayer structures.
For example, butterfly wings typically contain structural color, although many butterflies have cells that
contain pigment as well.

Pigments by chemical composition

Aluminium pigment: aluminum powder[23]
Barium: barium white (lithopone)
Cadmium pigments: cadmium yellow, cadmium red, cadmium green, cadmium orange,
cadmium sulfoselenide
Carbon pigments: carbon black (including vine black, lamp black), ivory black (bone
charcoal)
Chromium pigments: chrome yellow and chrome green (viridian)
Cobalt pigments: cobalt violet, cobalt blue, cerulean blue, aureolin (cobalt yellow)
 Copper pigments: azurite, Han purple, Han blue, Egyptian
blue, malachite, Paris green, Phthalocyanine Blue BN,
Phthalocyanine Green G, verdigris
Iron oxide pigments: sanguine, caput mortuum, oxide red,
red ochre, yellow ochre, Venetian red, Prussian blue, raw
sienna, burnt sienna, raw umber, burnt umber
Lead pigments: lead white, Naples yellow, red lead, lead-tin
yellow
Manganese pigments: manganese violet, YInMn blue
Mercury pigments: vermilion
Sulfur pigments: ultramarine, ultramarine green shade, lapis
lazuli Phthalo Blue

Titanium pigments: titanium yellow, titanium white, titanium

black
Zinc pigments: zinc white, zinc ferrite, zinc yellow

Biological and organic

Biological origins: alizarin, gamboge, cochineal red, rose madder, indigo, Indian yellow,
Tyrian purple
Non-biological organic: quinacridone, magenta, phthalo green, phthalo blue, pigment red
170, diarylide yellow

See also
Blue pigments
Lake pigment
List of Stone Age art
Red pigments
Rock art
Subtractive color

Notes
1. Gürses, A.; Açıkyıldız, M.; Güneş, K.; Gürses, M.S. (2016). "Dyes and Pigments: Their
Structure and Properties". Dyes and Pigments. Springer. pp. 13–29. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-
33892-7_2 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-3-319-33892-7_2). "Dyes are colored
substances which are soluble or go into solution during the application process and impart
color by selective absorption of light. Pigments are colored, colorless, or fluorescent
particulate organic or inorganic finely divided solids which are usually insoluble in, and
essentially chemically unaffected by, the vehicle or medium in which they are incorporated."
2. Völz, Hans G.; et al. "Pigments, Inorganic". Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry.
doi:10.1002/14356007.a20_243.pub2 (https://doi.org/10.1002%2F14356007.a20_243.pub
2). ISBN 3527306730.
3. Sahoo, Annapurna; Panigrahi, G. K. (1 September 2016). "A review on Natural Dye: Gift from
bacteria" (https://www.ijbio.com/articles/a-review-on-natural-dye-gift-from-bacteria.pdf)
(PDF). International Journal of Business. 5 (9): 4909.
 4. Schonbrun, Zach (18 April 2018). "The Quest for the Next Billion-Dollar Color" (https://www.b
loomberg.com/features/2018-quest-for-billion-dollar-red/). Bloomberg Businessweek.
Retrieved 2 May 2018.
5. Thomas B. Brill, Light: Its Interaction with Art and Antiquities, Springer 1980, p. 204
6. St. Clair, Kassia (2016). The Secret Lives of Colour. London: John Murray. pp. 21, 237.
ISBN 9781473630819. OCLC 936144129 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/936144129).
7. "Earliest evidence of art found" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/733747.stm). BBC News.
2 May 2000. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20160603214144/http://news.bbc.co.uk/
2/hi/sci/tech/733747.stm) from the original on 3 June 2016. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
8. "Pigments Through the Ages" (http://webexhibits.org/pigments/). WebExhibits.org. Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20071011071107/http://webexhibits.org/pigments/) from the
original on 11 October 2007. Retrieved 18 October 2007.
9. Lorelei H. Corcoran, "The Color Blue as an 'Animator' in Ancient Egyptian Art", in Rachael
B.Goldman, (ed.), Essays in Global Color History: Interpreting the Ancient Spectrum (New
Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2016), pp. 59–82.
10. Rossotti, Hazel (1983). Colour: Why the World Isn't Grey (https://archive.org/details/colour00r
oss). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02386-7.
11. Berke, Heinz (2007). "The invention of blue and purple pigments in ancient times" (https://pu
bs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2007/cs/b606268g). Chemical Society Reviews. 36 (1):
15–30. doi:10.1039/b606268g (https://doi.org/10.1039%2Fb606268g). PMID 17173142 (http
s://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17173142).
12. Hatton, G.D.; Shortland, A.J.; Tite, M.S. (2008). "The production technoloty of Egyptian blue
and green frits from second millenium BC Egypt and Mesopotamia" (https://www.sciencedire
ct.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305440307002166). Journal of Archaeological Science. 35
(6): 1591–1604. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2007.11.008 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.jas.2007.11.00
8).
13. Dariz, Petra; Schmid, Thomas (2021). "Trace compounds in Early Medieval Egyptian blue
carry information on provenance, manufacture, application, and ageing" (https://www.ncbi.nl
m.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8163881). Scientific Reports. 11 (11296): 11296.
Bibcode:2021NatSR..1111296D (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021NatSR..1111296D).
doi:10.1038/s41598-021-90759-6 (https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41598-021-90759-6).
PMC 8163881 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8163881). PMID 34050218 (h
ttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34050218).
14. Lead white (http://colourlex.com/project/lead-white/) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20
151225004451/http://colourlex.com/project/lead-white/) 25 December 2015 at the Wayback
Machine at ColourLex
15. St. Clair, Kassia (2016). The Secret Lives of Colour. London: John Murray. p. 146.
ISBN 9781473630819. OCLC 936144129 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/936144129).
16. "History of Indian yellow" (http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/indiv/history/indianyellow.ht
ml). Pigments Through the Ages. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20141221234605/htt
p://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/indiv/history/indianyellow.html) from the original on 21
December 2014. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
17. Prussian blue (https://colourlex.com/project/prussian-blue/) at ColourLex
18. Simon Garfield (2000). Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World (htt
ps://archive.org/details/mauvehowonemanin00garf). Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-393-02005-3.
19. Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (http://colourlex.com/project/vermeer-the-milkmaid/)
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20150414144606/http://colourlex.com/project/vermeer
-the-milkmaid/) 14 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine, ColourLex
20. "Dictionary of Color Terms" (https://web.archive.org/web/20140820184550/http://www.gamm
a-sci.com/dictionary-color-terms/). Gamma Scientific. Archived from the original (http://www.g
amma-sci.com/dictionary-color-terms/) on 20 August 2014. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
21. "Color Appearance" (http://helloartsy.com/color-appearance/). Hello Artsy. 2 September
2013.
22. "Chromatic Adaptation" (http://www2.cmp.uea.ac.uk/Research/compvis/ChromaticAdaptatio
n/ChromaticAdaptation.htm). cmp.uea.ac.uk. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2007092
9155854/http://www2.cmp.uea.ac.uk/Research/compvis/ChromaticAdaptation/ChromaticAda
ptation.htm) from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 16 April 2009.
23. Engineer Manual 1110-2-3400 Painting: New Construction and Maintenance (https://www.p
ublications.usace.army.mil/Portals/76/Publications/EngineerManuals/EM_1110-2-3400.pdf?
ver=2013-09-04-070832-857) (PDF). 30 April 1995. pp. 4–12. Archived (https://web.archive.o
rg/web/20171201031655/http://www.publications.usace.army.mil/Portals/76/Publications/En
gineerManuals/EM_1110-2-3400.pdf?ver=2013-09-04-070832-857) (PDF) from the original
on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 24 November 2017.

References
Ball, Philip (2002). Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
ISBN 0-374-11679-2.
Doerner, Max (1984). The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting: With Notes on the
Techniques of the Old Masters, Revised Edition. Harcourt. ISBN 0-15-657716-X.
Finlay, Victoria (2003). Color: A Natural History of the Palette. Random House. ISBN 0-8129-
7142-6.
Gage, John (1999). Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction.
University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22225-3.
Meyer, Ralph (1991). The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques, Fifth Edition (http
s://archive.org/details/artistshandbooko00maye_0). Viking. ISBN 0-670-83701-6.
Feller, R. L., ed. (1986). Artists' Pigments. A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics,
Vol. 1. London: Cambridge University Press.
Roy, A., ed. (1993). Artists' Pigments. A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, Vol.
2. Oxford University Press.
Fitzhugh, E. W., ed. (1997). Artists' Pigments. A Handbook of Their History and
Characteristics, Vol. 3. Oxford University Press.
Berrie, B., ed. (2007). Artists' Pigments. A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics,
Vol. 4. Archetype Books.

External links
Pigments through the ages (https://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/)
ColourLex Pigment Lexicon (https://colourlex.com/)
Sarah Lowengard,The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-century Europe (http://www.gutenberg
-e.org/lowengard/), Columbia University Press, 2006
Alchemy's Rainbow: Pigment Science and the Art of Conservation (https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=r3kSeX32nsk) on YouTube, Chemical Heritage Foundation
Poisons and Pigments: A Talk with Art Historian Elisabeth Berry-Drago (https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=lFF743BoQ3Q) on YouTube, Chemical Heritage Foundation
The Quest for the Next Billion-Dollar Color (https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-quest-
for-billion-dollar-red/)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pigment&oldid=1206950217"