Pigment

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Pigments for sale at a market stall in Goa, India.

A pigment is a colored material that is completely or nearly insoluble in water.[1] In contrast,

dyes are typically soluble, at least at some stage in their use. Generally dyes are often organic
compounds whereas pigments are often inorganic compounds. Pigments of prehistoric and
historic value include ochre, charcoal, and lapis lazuli.

Contents
 1 Economic impact
 2 Physical principles
 3 History
 4 Manufacturing and industrial standards
 5 Figures of merit
 6 Swatches
o 6.1 Printed swatches
o 6.2 Plastic swatches
o 6.3 Computer swatches
 7 Biological pigments
 8 Pigments by elemental composition
o 8.1 Biological and organic
 9 See also
 10 Notes
 11 References
 12 External links

Economic impact
In 2006, around 7.4 million tons of inorganic, organic, and special pigments were marketed
worldwide.[2] Estimated at around US$14.86 billion in 2018 and will rise at over 4.9% CAGR
from 2019 to 2026.[3] The global demand for pigments was roughly US$20.5 billion in 2009.[4]
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.[5]

Physical principles
Main article: Spectroscopy

A wide variety of wavelengths (colors) encounter a pigment. This pigment absorbs red and green
light, but reflects blue—giving the substance a blue-colored appearance.

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.[6] 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. Sunlight is considered a standard for white light. Artificial light
sources are less uniform.

Color spaces used to represent colors numerically must specify their 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.

Sunlight encounters Rosco R80 "Primary Blue" pigment. The product of the source spectrum and
the reflectance spectrum of the pigment results in the final spectrum, and the appearance of blue.
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.[7] 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, Zambia. Ochre, iron oxide, was the first color of paint. [8] A favored 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 Fe2O3,
and the hydrated Yellow Ochre (Fe2O3.H2O).[9] Charcoal—or carbon black—has also been used
as a black pigment since prehistoric times.[9]

Synthetic pigments were introduced as early as the third or fourth millennium BCE.[10] The first
synthetic pigment is Egyptian blue (blue frit), calcium copper silicate CaCuSi4O10, 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)2Pb(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.[citation needed] 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 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 dye, 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

Natural ultramarine pigment in powdered form

Synthetic ultramarine pigment is chemically identical to natural ultramarine

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 Standardization (ISO) develops technical standards for the 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.

Many manufacturers of paints, inks, textiles, plastics, and colors 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 (USA)—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 – #E34234 #FFB02E

Tyrian red Vermilion (genuine) Indian yellow
PB29 – #003BAF PB27 – #0B3E66
Ultramarine blue Prussian blue

Biological pigments
Main article: Biological pigment

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), as well as 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 elemental composition

Phthalo Blue
Main article: List of inorganic pigments

 Cadmium pigments: cadmium yellow, cadmium red, cadmium green, cadmium orange,
cadmium sulfoselenide
 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, cremnitz white, Naples yellow, red lead, lead-tin-yellow
 Manganese pigments: manganese violet, YInMn blue
 Mercury pigments: vermilion
 Titanium pigments: titanium yellow, titanium beige, titanium white, titanium black
 Zinc pigments: zinc white, zinc ferrite, zinc yellow
 Aluminum pigment: Aluminum powder[23]
 Carbon pigments: carbon black (including vine black, lamp black), ivory black (bone
charcoal)
 Ultramarine pigments (based on sulfur): ultramarine, ultramarine green shade

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
 List of Stone Age art
 Rock art
 Subtractive color

Notes
1.

 Völz, Hans G.; Kischkewitz, Jürgen; Woditsch, Peter; Westerhaus, Axel; Griebler, Wolf-
Dieter; De Liedekerke, Marcel; Buxbaum, Gunter; Printzen, Helmut; Mansmann. "Pigments,
Inorganic". Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH.
doi:10.1002/14356007.a20_243.pub2.
  Pigments Market size
  Market Study Pigments, 3rd ed., Ceresana, 11/13. Archived 3 September 2010 at the
Wayback Machine
  "Market Report: World Pigment Market". Acmite Market Intelligence. Archived from the
original on 29 November 2010.
  Schonbrun, Zach (18 April 2018). "The Quest for the Next Billion-Dollar Color".
Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 2 May 2018.
  Thomas B. Brill, Light: Its Interaction with Art and Antiquities, Springer 1980, p. 204
  St. Clair, Kassia (2016). The Secret Lives of Colour. London: John Murray. pp. 21, 237.
ISBN 9781473630819. OCLC 936144129.
  "Earliest evidence of art found". BBC News. 2 May 2000. Archived from the original on
3 June 2016. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  "Pigments Through the Ages". WebExhibits.org. Archived from the original on 11
October 2007. Retrieved 18 October 2007.
  Rossotti, Hazel (1983). Colour: Why the World Isn't Grey. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press. ISBN  0-691-02386-7.
  Berke, Heinz (2007). "The invention of blue and purple pigments in ancient times".
Chemical Society Reviews. 36: 15–30. doi:10.1039/b606268g.
  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". Journal of
Archaeological Science. 35: 1591–1604. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2007.11.008.
  Dariz, Petra; Schmid, Thomas (2021). "Trace compounds in Early Medieval Egyptian
blue carry information on provenance, manufacture, application, and ageing". Scientific
Reports. 11 (11296). doi:10.1038/s41598-021-90759-6. PMC 8163881.
  Lead white Archived 25 December 2015 at the Wayback Machine at ColourLex
  St. Clair, Kassia (2016). The Secret Lives of Colour. London: John Murray. p. 146.
ISBN 9781473630819. OCLC 936144129.
  "History of Indian yellow". Pigments Through the Ages. Archived from the original on 21
December 2014. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
  Prussian blue Archived 2 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine at ColourLex
  Simon Garfield (2000). Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the
World. Faber and Faber. ISBN  0-393-02005-3.
  Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid Archived 14 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine,
ColourLex
  "Dictionary of Color Terms". Gamma Scientific. Archived from the original on 20 August
2014. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
  "Color Appearance". Hello Artsy.[better  source  needed]
  "Chromatic Adaptation". cmp.uea.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 29 September
2007. Retrieved 16 April 2009.

23.  Engineer Manual 1110-2-3400 Painting: New Construction and Maintenance (PDF).
30 April 1995. pp. 4–12. Archived (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.
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

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pigments.

 Pigments through the ages

 ColourLex Pigment Lexicon
 Earliest evidence of art found
 Sarah Lowengard,The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-century Europe, Columbia
University Press, 2006
 Alchemy's Rainbow: Pigment Science and the Art of Conservation on YouTube,
Chemical Heritage Foundation
 Poisons and Pigments: A Talk with Art Historian Elisabeth Berry-Drago on YouTube,
Chemical Heritage Foundation
 The Quest for the Next Billion-Dollar Color


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Prehistoric technology

Authority control
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 Pigments
 Painting materials

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