Color theory

Definition
Color is the element of art that is produced when light, striking an object, is
reflected back to the eye: that's the objective definition. But in art design,
color has a slew of attributes which are primarily subjective. 
Subjectively, then, color is a sensation, a human reaction to a hue arising in
part from the optic nerve, and in part from education and exposure to color,
and perhaps in the largest part, simply from the human senses.

Properties

 Hue: the color itself, the distinctive quality by which one can distinguish
one color from another, e.g., red, blue, green, blue. 
 Value: the brightness of the hue, the quality by which one distinguishes a
light color from a dark one, in the range from white to black.
 Chroma or intensity: the quality that distinguishes a strong color from a
weak one, the departure of a color sensation from that of white or gray,
the intensity of a color hue
 Saturation and value are two distinct measurements of color
 properties.

Image via Web Designer Depot

Types

Color, scientifically, is the visual stimulation on the color receptors in

the human eye from reflected light of a certain wavelength. For
example, if you look at a red object, what you are seeing as "red" is
the wavelength of the light that is reflected off the object into your
eyes. The other wavelengths of light are absorbed and so you do not
see them. This is why you can "cancel out" colors with tinted plastic;
if you put a red sheet over white paper with blue and red lines on it,
you will only be able to see the blue lines, which will look black; the
red lines have red light shining on them from the plastic and become
the same color as the rest of the paper.
Local Color
In painting, local color is the natural color of an object in ordinary daylight,
without the influence of reflected light from adjacent colors. So, bananas are
yellow; apples are red; leaves are green; lemons are yellow; the sky on a
clear day is blue; tree trunks are brown or gray. Local color is the most basic
broad-brush approach to perceptual color and is how children are first taught
to see and identify color and objects. It incorporates the effect of color

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constancy, in which our brains recognize the true color of an object despite
different lighting conditions

OPTICAL COLOR refers to a method of coloring with dots of multiple

single colors rather than with a mixed color. This allows the brain to
meld all the colors together, perceiving them as a single or blended
color. This can be seen in comic strips, where the printing method of
blending a few choice colors is faster and more accurate than having
nozzle tips  for every possible shade. This method is also used
in LCD screens, where each pixel point on the screen is composed of
a RED GREEN BLUE node, which are lightened and dimmed to
create a vast spectrum of color. A similar method of art is
called Pointillism.

Arbitrary Color refers to the use of color that is "wrong" or incorrect for
the subject depicted, but is deliberately chosen by the artist to evoke a
certain emotion or feeling. A good example of this is the Uffington White
Horse, an enormous piece of landscaped art in Great Britain. The horse
is an abstract piece that evokes speed of movement instead of realism,
but the striking white of the chalk underneath the green sod give the
horse an otherworldly feel, as if it had been inscribed there by aliens.
Another example is the work of Andy Warhol, who used powerful primary
colors to show soup cans as cultural artifacts instead of simple objects.

Other types

There are three different types of colors: primary, secondary, and

tertiary colors. The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. The
secondary colors are green, orange, and purple. And the tertiary colors
are yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green,
and yellow-green. These are the 12 colors that typically appear on a
color wheel.

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Primary colors are known as basic colors because they cannot be
created by mixing other hues. Since humans are trichromatic, the
primary colors yellow, red, and blue are fundamental to human vision.
Primary colors are the building blocks of all other colors.

Secondary colors are created by the equal mixture of two

primary colors. For example, yellow and red make orange,
red and blue make purple, and blue and yellow make green.
On a color wheel, the secondary colors are located between
two primary colors.

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Tertiary colors are also called intermediate colors.

Image via Arty Factory

When you blend secondary and primary colors together, you get what
is called a tertiary color, or intermediate color. On a color wheel, the
tertiary colors are found between the primary and secondary colors.
Yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green, and
yellow-green are examples of tertiary colors.

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Colors located near each other on the color wheel are
known as analogous colors.

Image via In Color Order

Analogous colors flatter each other when used together because they
are so close to each other on the color wheel. When using analogous
colors, painters make sure they have enough contrast, often choosing
one dominant color, a second supporting color, and a third color that
acts as an accent.

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Monochromatic colors are really just a variety of one color.

Image via Little House on the Valley

1. A monochromatic color scheme uses variations of a single hue to
create a clean, elegant, and single-colored work of art. Using this
type of color scheme will establish one overall mood and can be
visually appealing.

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Neutral colors are also known as earth tones.

Image via Marilyns Keepsakes

2. Neutral colors don't show up on a color wheel. They can be created
by mixing two complimentary colors or combining a pure color
with white, black, or gray. Pure neutral colors include black, white,
and all grays while near neutrals include browns, tans, and darker
colors.

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Complementary colors are more vivid when combined.

Image via Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons

3. Complementary colors are two hues found on opposite sides of
each other on the color wheel. For example, red's complementary
color is green, and blue's complementary color is orange. A
painting or work of art that relies on complimentary colors will
have the strongest contrast. This color palette will draw the most
attention and is extremely pleasing to the eye.

Colour And Light

The nature of colour

4. Aristotle viewed colour to be the product of a mixture of white

and black, and this was the prevailing belief until 1666, when Isaac
Newton’s prism experiments provided the scientific basis for the
understanding of colour. Newton showed that a prism could break up
white light into a range of colours, which he called

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 the spectrum (see figure), and that the recombination of these spectral
colours re-created the white light. Although he recognized that the
spectrum was continuous, Newton used the seven colour names red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet for segments of the
spectrum by analogywith the seven notes of the musical scale.

Newton's prism experiment.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

5. Newton realized that colours other than those in the spectral sequence
do exist, but he noted that

6. all the colours in the universe which are made by light, and depend not on the power of
imagination, are either the colours of homogeneal lights [i.e., spectral colours], or  compounded  of
these.

7. Newton also recognized that

8. rays, to speak properly, are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain power…to stir
up a sensation of this or that colour.
9. The unexpected difference between light perception and sound
perception clarifies this curious aspect of colour. When beams of light of
different colours, such as red and yellow, are projected together onto a
white surface in equal amounts, the resulting perception of the eye
signals a single colour (in this case, orange) to the brain, a signal that
may be identical to that produced by a single beam of light. When,
however, two musical tones are sounded simultaneously, the individual
tones can still be easily discerned; the sound produced by a combination

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 of tones is never identical to that of a single tone. A tone is the result of
a specific sound wave, but a colour can be the result of a single light
beam or a combination of any number of light beams.

The laws of colour mixture

Colours of the spectrum are called chromatic colours; there are

also nonchromatic colours such as the browns, magentas, and
pinks. The term achromatic colours is sometimes applied to the
black-gray-white sequence. According to some estimates, the eye
can distinguish some 10 million colours, all of which derive from
two types of light mixture: additive and subtractive. As the names
imply, additive mixture involves the addition of spectral
components, and subtractive mixture concerns the subtraction
or absorptionof parts of the spectrum.

Additive mixing occurs when beams of light are combined. The

colour circle, first devised by Newton, is still widely used for
purposes of colour design and is also useful when the qualitative
behaviour of mixing beams of light is considered. Newton’s colour
circle combines the spectral colours red, orange,
yellow, green, cyan, indigo, and blue-violet with the nonspectral
colour magenta (a mixture of blue-violet and red light beams), as
shown in the figure. White is at the centre and is produced by
mixing light beams of approximately equal intensities
of complementary colours (colours that are diametrically
opposed on the colour circle), such as yellow and blue-violet,
green and magenta, or cyan and red. Intermediate colours can be
produced by mixing light beams, so mixing red and yellow gives
orange, red and blue-violet gives magenta, and so on.

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The three additive primary colours are red, green, and blue; this
means that, by additively mixing the colours red, green, and blue in
varying amounts, almost all other colours can be produced, and, when
the three primaries are added together in equal amounts, white is
produced.
Additive mixing can be demonstrated physically by using three slide
projectors fitted with filters so that one projector shines a beam of
saturated red light onto a white screen, another a beam of saturated
blue light, and the third a beam of saturated green light. Additive
mixing occurs where the beams overlap (and thus are added
together), as shown in the figure (left). Where red and green beams
overlap, yellow is produced. If more red light is added or if the intensity
of the green light is decreased, the light mixture becomes orange.
Similarly, if there is more green light than red light, a yellow-green is
produced.

(Left) The additive mixing of red, green, and blue. (Right) The subtractive mixing of magenta, yellow, and
cyan.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Subtractive colour mixing involves the absorption and selective

transmission or reflection of light. It occurs when colorants (such
as pigments or dyes) are mixed or when several coloured filters are
inserted into a single beam of white light. For example, if a projector is
fitted with a deep red filter, the filter will transmit red light and absorb
other colours. If the projector is fitted with a strong green filter, red
light will be absorbed and only green light transmitted. If, therefore, the
projector is fitted with both red and green filters, all colours will be
absorbed and no light transmitted, resulting in black. Similarly, a

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yellow pigment absorbs blue and violet light while reflecting yellow,
green, and red light (the green and red additively combining to
produce more yellow). Blue pigment absorbs primarily yellow, orange,
and red light. If the yellow and blue pigments are mixed, green will be
produced since it is the only spectral component that is not strongly
absorbed by either pigment.

Because additive processes have the greatest gamut when the

primaries are red, green, and blue, it is reasonable to expect that the
greatest gamut in subtractive processes will be achieved when the
primaries are, respectively, red-absorbing, green-absorbing, and blue-
absorbing. The colour of an image that absorbs red light while
transmitting all other radiations is blue-green, often called cyan. An
image that absorbs only green light transmits both blue light and red
light, and its colour is magenta. The blue-absorbing image transmits
only green light and red light, and its colour is yellow. Hence, the
subtractive primaries are cyan, magenta, and yellow (seefigure, right).
No concepts in the field of colour have traditionally been more
confused than those just discussed. This confusion can be traced to
two prevalent misnomers: the subtractive primary cyan, which is
properly a blue-green, is commonly called blue; and the subtractive
primary magenta is commonly called red. In these terms, the
subtractive primaries become red, yellow, and blue; and those whose
experience is confined for the most part to subtractive mixtures have
good cause to wonder why the physicist insists on regarding red,
green, and blue as the primary colours. The confusion is at once
resolved when it is realized that red, green, and blue are selected as
additive primaries because they provide the greatest colour gamut in
mixtures. For the same reason, the subtractive primaries are,
respectively, red-absorbing (cyan), green-absorbing (magenta), and
blue-absorbing (yellow).

How light gives object colour.

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The ‘colour’ of an object is the wavelengths of light that it reflects. This is determined by
the arrangement of electrons in the atoms of that substance that will absorb and re-emit
photons of particular energies according to complicated quantum laws. So tomatoes are
red because the pigment atoms in the skin absorb photons of all energies except those
that correspond to red wavelengths of light, which they reflect back to your eye.

But the colour that you perceive is about much more than the wavelengths of light. The
visual cortex of your brain has evolved to perform lots of context-dependent corrections
to correct for the colour and intensity of the ambient light. The effect is that the colour of
an object has just as much to do with the colour you think it ‘should’ be.

Color psychology
Color psychology is the study of hues as a determinant of human behavior. Color
influences perceptions that are not obvious, such as the taste of food. Colors have
qualities that can cause certain emotions in people. Colors can also enhance the
effectiveness of placebos.

 For example, red or orange pills are generally used as stimulants. Color can influence a
person and its influence may differ by a person's age, gender, and culture. For instance,
heterosexual men tend to report that red outfits enhance female attractiveness, while
heterosexual females deny any outfit color impacting that of men
Color psychology is also widely used in marketing and branding. Marketers see color as
important since color can influence a consumers' emotions and perceptions about
goods and services. Logos for companies are important since the logos can attract
more costumers. This happens when customers believe the company logo matches the
personality of the goods and services such as the color pink being heavily used on
Victoria's Secret branding Colors are also important for window displays in stores.
Research shows that colors such as red tended to attract spontaneous purchasers,
despite cool colors such as blue being more favorable.

 has long been used to create feelings of coziness or spaciousness.

However, how people are affected by different color stimuli varies
from person to person.

Blue is the top choice for 35% of Americans, followed by green (16%),
purple (10%) and red (9%).

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A preference for blue and green may be due to a preference for
certain habitats that were beneficial in the ancestral environment as
explained in the evolutionary aestheticsarticle.
There is evidence that color preference may depend on ambient
temperature. People who are cold prefer warm colors like red and
yellow while people who are hot prefer cool colors like blue and green.
Some research has concluded that women and men respectively
prefer "warm" and "cool" colors.

Influence of color on perception

Color has a large impact on food. Color affects how people perceive the
edibility and flavor of foods and drinks. Not only the color of the food itself
but also that of everything in the eater's field of vision can affect this. For
example, in food stores, bread is normally sold in packaging decorated or
tinted with golden or brown tones to promote the idea of home baked and
oven freshness People can mistake a cherry flavored drink for being lime or
lemon flavored if that drink was a green color. Additionally, a flavor can be
intensified by a color. People can rate a brown M&M as more chocolate
flavored than a green M&M based on color.

Color physiology.

The human eye and brain together translate light into color. Light

receptors within the eye transmit messages to the brain, which produces
the familiar sensations of color. ... Rather, the surface of an object reflects
some colors and absorbs all the others. We perceive only the
reflected colors.
When light hits an object – say, a banana – the object absorbs
some of the light and reflects the rest of it. Which wavelengths are
reflected or absorbed depends on the properties of the object.
For a ripe banana, wavelengths of about 570 to 580 nanometers
bounce back. These are the wavelengths of yellow light.

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When you look at a banana, the wavelengths of reflected light
determine what color you see. The light waves reflect off the banana's
peel and hit the light-sensitive retina at the back of your eye. That's
where cones come in.

Cones are one type of photoreceptor, the tiny cells in the retina that
respond to light. Most of us have 6 to 7 million cones, and almost all of
them are concentrated on a 0.3 millimeter spot on the retina called the
fovea centralis.

Not all of these cones are alike. About 64 percent of them respond
most strongly to red light, while about a third are set off the most by
green light. Another 2 percent respond strongest to blue light.

When light from the banana hits the cones, it stimulates them to
varying degrees. The resulting signal is zapped along the optic nerve
to the visual cortex of the brain, which processes the information and
returns with a color: yellow.

Humans, with our three cone types, are better at discerning color than
most mammals, but plenty of animals beat us out in the color vision
department. Many birds and fish have four types of cones, enabling
them to see ultraviolet light, or light with wavelengths shorter than
what the human eye can perceive.

Color wheels .

 color wheel or color circle[1] is an abstract illustrative organization

of color hues around a circle, which shows the relationships

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between primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary
colors etc
Some objects are luminous and give off their own light; all other
objects can only be seen if they reflect light into your eyes. However,
humans can only see visible light, a narrow band of the
electromagnetic spectrum (which also includes non-visible radio
waves, infrared light, ultraviolet light, X-rays, and gamma rays). In
terms of wavelengths, visible light ranges from about 400 nm to 700
nm.

Different wavelengths of light are perceived as different colors

1. Pigment wheel
The typical artists' paint or pigment color wheel includes the blue, red,
and yellow primary colors. The corresponding secondary
colors are green, orange, and violet or purple. The tertiary
colors are green-yellow, yellow-orange, orange-red, red-violet/purple,
purple/violet-blue and blue-green.

2.Light wheel based on light emitting objects.

Additive (Light) Color Primaries

Red, green, and blue are the primary colors of light—they can be
combined in different proportions to make all other colors. For example, red
light and green light added together are seen as yellow light. This additive

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color system is used by light sources, such as televisions and computer
monitors, to create a wide range of colors. When different proportions of red,
green, and blue light enter your eye, your brain is able to interpret the
different combinations as different colors.

Light wheel. Process wheel.

Primary Color Models

A color wheel based on RGB (red, green, blue) or RGV (red, green,
violet) additive primaries has cyan, magenta, and yellow
secondaries (cyan was previously known as cyan blue).
Alternatively, the same arrangement of colors around a circle can
be described as based on cyan, magenta, and yellow subtractive
primaries, with red, green, and blue (or violet) being secondaries.

3 Process wheel

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The CMYK color model (/smaɪk/; process color, four color) is
a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color
printing, and is also used to describe the printing process
itself. CMYK refers to the four ink plates used in some color
printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key citation needed  (black).
[ ]

The CMYK model works by partially or entirely masking colors on a

lighter, usually white, background. The ink reduces the light that would
otherwise be reflected. Such a model is called subtractive because inks
"subtract" the colors red, green and blue from white light. White light
minus red leaves cyan, white light minus green leaves magenta, and
white light minus blue leaves yellow.

Process-color. four color printing process. A printing process which uses

four specific colored inks: cyan, magenta, yellow as primaries and k for
black means keycolor (CMYK), and halftone printing plates, to reproduce a
range of colors.
. When CMY “secondary” are combined at full strength, the resulting
“primary” mixtures are red, green, and blue. Mixing all three gives an
imperfect black or a perfect grey.

.Difference betwwen light wheel(additive color mixing) and process wheel

(substractive color mixing)

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In additive color models, such as RGB, white is the "additive" combination
of all primary colored lights, while black is the absence of light. In the
CMYK model, it is the opposite: white is the natural color of the paper or
other background, while black results from a full combination of colored
inks. To save cost on ink, and to produce deeper black
tones, unsaturated and dark colors are produced by using black ink instead
of the combination of cyan, magenta, and yellow.

About RGB-CMYK
 Scanners, digital cameras and computer monitors use red,
green and blue (RGB) light to display color.
 Commercial printing presses print with cyan, magenta, yellow
and black (CMYK) ink, called process printing, instead of RGB
light, and therefore produce a different range of color.
See 4 color process printing explained for more info.
 To print on a four-color press, all RGB files must be converted
into CMYK color.

RGB lights combine to make white

CMYK inks combine to create black

1. Certain RGB colors that you can see on your monitor (in
particular, bright blue, green and red) cannot be replicated with
standard CMYK inks. These unachievable RGB colors are said

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 to be "out of the CMYK color gamut." When selecting colors for
your print project, use CMYK color builds to avoid potential
RGB conversion issues.
2.You are more likely to notice color shifts with solid bright
backgrounds.

RGB Colors
(what you see on screen)

CMYK colors
(printed with ink)

Color photographs do not suffer much from the

RGB-CMYK conversion.

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RGB refers to the primary colors of light, Red, Green and Blue, that
are used in monitors, television screens, digital cameras and
scanners. CMYK refers to the primary colors of pigment: Cyan,
Magenta, Yellow, and Black. These are the inks used on the press
in "4-color process printing", commonly referred to as "full color
printing" or "four color printing".
The combination of RGB light creates white, while the combination
of CMYK inks creates black. Therefore, it is physically impossible
for the printing press to exactly reproduce colors as we see them
on our monitors.

Visual wheel
Kind of pigment wheel based on pigments. Based on
substractive color mixing, as colors are seen by
reflection of light,not b emitting lights.

It has four colors (green yellow red and blue) as

primaries. And rest are secondaries and turteries.

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Munsell wheel
In colorimetry, the Munsell color system is a color space that
specifies colors based on three properties of color: hue, value
(lightness), and chroma (color purity). It was created by
Professor Albert H. Munsell in the first decade of the 20th
century and adopted by the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) as the official color system
for soil research in the 1930s.

The Munsell color system, showing: a circle of hues at value 5 chroma 6; the neutral values from 0 to 10; and
the chromas of purple-blue (5PB) at value 5.

It has 5 primaries that are red, yellow, green, blue, and

violet.

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Color schemes

Monochromatic Color Schemes

Monochromatic color schemes are easy to create because they use only one
color.

Monochromatic schemes use different tones from the same angle on the color
wheel (the same hue).

Experiment and learn more using our Monochromatic Color Scheme Generator.

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Analogous Color Schemes

Analogous color schemes are also easy to create.

Analogous color schemes are created by using colors that are next to each other
on the color wheel.

Experiment and learn more using our Analogous Color Scheme Generator.

Complementary Color Schemes

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Complementary schemes are created by combining colors from opposite sides of
the color wheel.

Experiment and learn more using our Complementary Color Scheme Generator.

Triadic

Triadic schemes are made up of hues equally spaced around color wheel.

Experiment and learn more using our Triadic Color Scheme Generator.

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Compound (aka Split Complementary) Color Scheme

Compound schemes are almost the same as complementary schemes.

Instead of using colors that are opposites, it uses colors on both sides of the
opposite hue.

Triadic color scheme 

A triadic color scheme uses colors that are evenly spaced around the
color wheel.

Triadic color schemes tend to be quite vibrant, even if you use pale or
unsaturated versions of your hues.

To use a triadic harmony successfully, the colors should be carefully

balanced - let one color dominate and use the two others for accent.

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 Split-Complementary color scheme 
The split-complementary color scheme is a variation of the
complementary color scheme. In addition to the base color, it uses the
two colors adjacent to its complement.

This color scheme has the same strong visual contrast as the
complementary color scheme, but has less tension.

The split-complimentary color scheme is often a good choice for

beginners, because it is difficult to mess up.

Rectangle (tetradic) color scheme 

The rectangle or tetradic color scheme uses four colors arranged into
two complementary pairs.

This rich color scheme offers plenty of possibilities for variation.

Tetradic color schemes works best if you let one color be dominant.

You should also pay attention to the balance between warm and cool
colors in your design.

Square color scheme 

The square color scheme is similar to the rectangle, but with all four
colors spaced evenly around the color circle.

Square color schemes works best if you let one color be dominant.

You should also pay attention to the balance between warm and cool
colors in your design.

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 Color and temperature.

Warm & Cool Colors

 Warm colors — such as red, yellow, and orange; evoke warmth because they remind us of things like the
sun or fire.
 Cool colors — such as blue, green, and purple (violet); evoke a cool feeling because they remind us of
things like water or grass.

Warm colors advance and cool colors recede, affecting the perception of depth. This theory is
based upon that fact that the eye adjusts when focusing on colors of different wavelengths.
Red light waves have a longer wavelength than blue ones. An image containing both cool and
warm colors would demonstrate contrast of temperature or warm/cool contrast creating
more complex relationships between the color (warm colors can read cooler against a higher
intensity warm colors and cool colors sometimes can advance against predominately warm
palette).

Neutral Colors – Gray, Brown. These aren’t on most color wheels, but they’re considered
neutral because they don’t contrast with much of anything. They’re dull and
uneventful.However, drop a little color in a headline and it will sing.cool against warm neutral
color cheme contrast.

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Tints and shades

Some tints and shades of blue

In color theory, a tint is a mixture of a color with white, which reduces darkness, while

a shade is a mixture with black, which increases darkness. Both processes affect the
resulting color mixture's relative lightness. A tone is produced either by mixing a color
with grey, or by both tinting and shading.[1] Mixing a color with any neutral
color (including black, gray, and white) reduces the chroma, or colorfulness, while
the hue (the relative mixture of red, yellow, green, etc. depending on the colorspace)
remains unchanged.

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