Color Definitions

Graphic Design

• There are tens of thousands of colors at designers’ disposal, and almost infinite ways of combining them.

• The designers must:– get to grips with the

ways in which colors are classified and

– the terms used to describe them.

• Color can be said to differ in 3 significant ways:– Hue, tone, saturation

Hue, tone, saturation

• A pure color, such as red/green/blue, is known as the hue.

• It is the generic name of the color.

• A single hue will have many variations of its pure color, ranging from light to dark.

• The term describing this is “tone”.

• A Tint is hue with white added– Pink is a tint (red + white)

• A Shade is a hue with black added

• A Tint is a hue with white added.

+ =

+ =

red blk

red wht pink

Hue, tone, saturation

• A single hue will vary according to its brightness.

• This is known as “saturation”, also called chroma/ intensity.

Saturation

• is a measure of a color's pureness and brilliance.

• In subtractive color processing like CYMK, the more we mix colors the less pure they become; therefore, the color appears dull.

Adjusting saturation

• means adding black, gray, or color complements to a paint color in order to decrease saturation which will dull it or "knock it back".   

• Doing so moves the color farther away from its purest state of hue.

Pure Colors De-saturated

Hue, tone, saturation

• An excellent aid is a color wheel that shows the full spectrum of colors from red through to violet.

Additive Mixing

Primary colors for Light

Red

GreenBlue

Secondary colors for Light

Red

GreenBlue

Red + Green = Yellow

Green + Blue = Cyan

Red + Blue = Magenta

Red + Green + Blue = White

Red

GreenBlue

How we see color?!

• When light strikes the pigmented surface, some wavelengths are absorbed and others reflected.

• The reflected wavelengths determine the color we see.

• So what we call red paint is paint that absorbs green and blue.

The Sun gives off "white" light, a mixture of all the colors in the spectrum.

The object appears BLACK because RED, BLUE, and GREEN are all absorbed, which leaves nothing to be reflected.

We see the color BLACK.

Subtractive Mixing/ Primaries

Why called subtractive?!

• Because each color printed on to a stock subtracts from white and if the 3 primaries overlap, black will result.

Subtractive Mixing/ Primaries

CyanYellow

Magenta

Secondary for Subtractive Mixing

Cyan + Yellow = Green

Yellow + Magenta + Red

Magenta + Cyan + Blue

Complementary Colors

• Two hues directly opposite one another on a color wheel which, when mixed together in proper proportions, produce a neutral gray.

Complementary Colors

• e.g., blue and orange, yellow and purple, red and green .

Complementary Colors

• When a pair of high intensity complements are placed side by side, they seem to vibrate and draw attention to the element

sample

Henri Matisse - Woman with the Hat, Paris - 1904-5

Analogous colors

• Colors that are closely related in hue(s).

• They are usually adjacent (next) to each other on the color wheel.

Analogous

• - colors that contain a common hue and are found next to each other on the color wheel, e.g., violet, red-violet, and red create a sense of harmony. 

• Remember adjoining colors on the wheel are similar and tend to blend together.

Monochromatic:

• This color scheme uses colors from the same Hue on the color wheel, but with varying saturation and/or lightness (for example: different shades or tints of red).

Combination of colors• Combination of Complimentary

colors:– > Contrast

• Combination of Analogous colors:– > Harmony