Understanding colors

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I often want to put words on everything, and I had some problem with colors, because there are so many. Finally I managed to have a representation so I know what a color can be.

First, there is something to understand about bright colors. The lightest color is yellow, which can make it hard to stand. On the other side, Blue and red are darked colors, which give the a sensation of depth.

Notice the hue that goes from red to yellow, cyan, blue, magenta and back to red. In fact, people do not make the difference between blue and cyan, so they say dark blue for blue and light blue for cyan. So in fact, the adjectives "light" and "dark" do not really mean more lightness or less lightness, even if it includes it. That's very strange because someone will say "dark blue" for a blue that is quite intense.

Also, because yellow is very bright, dark yellow does not look like yellow at all ! It's called brown or olive. On the contrary, as blue is dark, if you add lightness to it, you get "periwinkle", which does not feel like blue either. And light red is pink.

Now about gray and white. In fact, gray is "dark white", just like there is dark red and dark green.

I feel that colors can be represented as a cone. The base contains colors without white or gray. At the center of the base is black, and around it are all the colors in a circle. Dark colors are between the black center and the bright border of the base. When going up, it gets more gray/white. At the top is the pure white color. On the side is the gradient between bright colors and white. Between are pale colors.

Most of the time, reflected light is white, so when you look at an object that has some reflection, usually, the apparent color is between the color of the object and white (on the side of the cone). Really like mirrors. This make it puzzling for me when looking at shining objects, because it is like seeing an object and a mirror at the same time.

Hope you enjoyed.

Note : I don't know if I'm posting in the right category...

My understanding is that colors is a cube standing on it's corner. Height is value, distance from central axis is saturation, and angle from central axis is hue.

Very informative. Thank you.

I never had problems telling colours apart. I did art classes to help me learn.
I see more in colours than colours though. They have emotion and relate to words and numbers and temperatures.

I've done color blind tests and passed them but I've had multiple times where people told me something was green that I look at and see it as blue. I have a blue dresser that multiple people referred to as green and the walls in my bedroom in my old house looked blue to me but others called them green.

From the time I first found out how the normal human eye sees colors, I have seen colors in the same way. Contrary to popular belief, we cannot see a theoretically infinite set of colors. In fact, we can see only three colors in varying brightness. The brightness of each color is then processed by the brain, and in the end we think we see a lot of different colors. The colors we can see are generally called red, green and blue. If you see something that is bright red and green at the same time, we interpret the colors as yellow. If green and blue are mixed in equal amounts, we think we see the "color" cyan. And so on.

Now when I look at something that is a particular "color", I immediately begin taking the "color" apart and analyzing it based on what I have learned. How much red is in that "color"? How much green? How much blue? How much more red could I add to that "color" to make it appear as another "color"? If I took a little blue out of that "color", what would be the result? This can translate to a form of "stimming" if I don't quickly catch myself and rein it in. It can be frustrating for me sometimes. - LJS

Some colors aren't so obvious, sometimes I discuss with my friends/family if something is a bluish green or greenish blue (just for fun)



I didn't go to art lessons but I have been learning digital art autodidactically and I noticed that now I can see more colors than before, years ago I would say that my skin is pink or light brown, now I can see that it has also some red, yellow, blue and green with low contrast and if I tell that to someone who doesn't paint he would ask me if I'm drugged.


Pretty much like what I do

This is because cyan is not recognize by many people as a primary color. The complete list is : red, yellow, green, cyan, blue (=dark bright blue) and magenta (red 100% and blue 100%). And white is like a primary color too. All others colors are between these. But as cyan is ignored most of the time, it can be seen as green or as blue, which are the nearest colors. Cyan is seen as a light blue even if it is a different hue from blue, but of course it is as close to blue as to green. Hence the confusion.

From a perceptive point of view, eyes detect roughly detect blue, green and yellow. Then immediately contrasts are calculated from it : black/white, blue/yellow, (magenta or )red/green. For example, yellow detectors detect more red than green detectors do, so red is deduced from the difference between yellow and green detectors. From this, the color is created, so the same physical color (light wavelengths) can be perceived differently according to the colors around it. This process is not conscious, we only see the result.

Notice that cyan is not detected as a primary contrast, and I suppose that it is the same for magenta. And we can feel that cyan is near green and blue (it is in fact the sum), and also that magenta is near red and blue (also the sum). But yellow, which is the sum of red and green, does not seem to be near these colors, because it is detected as a primary contrast.

Yep, that representation is the best one for lightness value and R/G/B composition. There is a third representation which is a double cone where we keep the cube orientation, but remove the angles in both top and bottom part. Note that in fact, R/G/B representation is not comprehensive, because some colors cannot be strictly represented as the sum of red green and blue. For example, cyan on a computer is not as bright as cyan can be. On the other hand, if we take imaginary colors into account, the cube is the best representation.

Personnaly I hesitate between the standing cube/ double cone, and the simple cone which I was talking at the beginning. The double cone shows lightness value accurately, but the simple cone show the principle of adding gray and bright colors. In this case you have horizontally the bright color component, and vertically the gray/white component. For example, if you have a pale color, you don't see much presence of the bright color, which is represented in the simple cone as a small distance between the axis, and more presence of white and gray, which is related to the vertical position. Whereas with a double cone or a standing cube, the gray/white component is not obvious.


You're welcome.


This makes me wonder how much colors are related to the emotions and so on as a basic feature of the brain. I mean that we can learn to associate a color with a feeling or a number etc. but is this learning completely arbitrary (a pure conditioning) or not ?

I have a pretty good color perception, which was a requirement for my job in the print / graphics industry. Thanks to my former job, I can look at color tones and tell people relatively precise CMYK color values as well as approximate RGB values. I also have a good eye for HKS and Pantone colors.

Redacted

Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 6:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

Color numbers are rather arbitrary, or sometimes based on technical restrictions. For example, the intensity of each RGB color ranges from 0 to 255, whereas the intensity of rasterized offset printing colors is expressed in a percentage from 0 to 100.

But the emotional value of colors is based on our environment and our evolutionary history. We associate blue with water (as well as the sky), so blue is a cool color. Light, desaturated blue colors appear outright cold, because they remind us of ice and snow. Green and earth tones are calmative, because they are linked to forests and shelter in our mind.

Yellow, orange and red are associated with fire and the sun, so we experience these tones as warm. They also stimulate the part of the brain that processes hunger, because we associate them with fruits. That's why most fast food places and restaurants use yellow and red tones (think of McDonald's and Burger King). One wouldn't use blue or green tones for a fast food chain unless they sell seafood.

Red is also associated with danger. It is the color of blood and dominance (dominance because males have ruddier faces than females, and an unusually red face signals high blood pressure due to anger and aggression). Studies have found that sports teams and martial artists that wear red outfits have a higher chance of winning a game or competition, because red intimidates the opponent. And red is also the color of love, because sexual attraction flushes the cheeks (that's why putting on blush to simulate reddened cheeks makes women appear more attractive and approachable).

In the business world where people are expected to act "cool" and level-headed, we mostly use cool blue tones and neutral colors such as white and gray. Business suits tend to be either gray or blue. You rarely ever see a business person in a green suit, nevermind a red or yellow suit Or a red office carpet, for that matter. They tend to be gray or blue as well, or sometimes in earth tones to appear more homely and comforting.

I have no explanation for pastel colors. They feel soft, light and airy, and we usually associate them with femininity and with infants, but I have no idea why that is. It might just be a cultural thing.

Last edited by CrazyCatLord on 28 Jan 2012, 8:20 am, edited 2 times in total.

That is correct. (But I think you meant "Black ink is also needed because the pigments are not perfect enough).

I only have to add that white and black are either the complete absence or the entirety of all colors. In the additive model, the primary colors add up to white, while black is the lack of color. In the subtractive model, it is exactly the other way around: white is the color of the blank paper, whereas the primary colors add up to black (at least in theory).

The primary colors in the two different models are also the color negatives of one another (the so-called complementary colors). Red is complementary to cyan, since cyan absorbs red and reflects blue and green. Blue is complementary to yellow (absorbs blue, reflects red and green), and green is complementary to magenta (which reflects red and blue only). If you look at the dia negative of a color photo or hit Ctrl + I in Photoshop, you will see that reddish skin tones turn into light cyan, and green trees appear in purplish magenta tones.

Yes, of course, but I did not mean that kind of association.


Thanks a lot. It's not clear though how much it is genetic and how much it is due to our experience. But anyway, the experiences that you mention (water, fire etc.) are so universal that it's almost the same. We can expect someone to feel colors like that.


Indeed. In fact, I was talking of primary colors in a more general meaning. If you are in the dark, you get no information and you see black. So black is the absence of color. But, even if white can be generated by adding red&green&blue, you don't see these colors when you look at something white. So from a subjective point of view, white is a color in itself. It has shades of lightness (gray) just like any other color. Imagine you are in a dark environnement, and there is some object that you can see. To form that object, you will mentally put colors in it. In order to imagine any color from that, you will need a combination of all subjective primary colors, which include both RGB and CMY, and also white. You can argue that if you are familiar with the way color mix together, you can use only RGB and consider that you put yellow on the object you imagine by adding red and green, but that's not what is really going on from a subjective point of view.

That's awesome , you are like a human eyedropper.