About Color What is Color How do We

About Color

¿ What is Color? ¿ How do We See Colors? ¿ ¿ ¿ Reflection of light ¿ Rods/Cones Colors in Pigment (paint) ¿ Subtractive ¿ Complementary Colors ¿ Warm/Cool Color in Light ¿ Additive ¿ TV/Computer/Phones ¿ Can be Mixed

What is Color? ¿ ¿ How humans perceive color depends on the interplay of three elements: the nature of the light, the reflective properties of an object, and the ways in which our retina and visual cortex process light waves Pure white light, such as sunlight, is composed of the visible colors. Sir Isaac Newton discovered this in 1666 by passing a beam of light through a prism.

¿ Newton observed that color is not inherent in objects. Rather, the surface of an object reflects some colors and absorbs all the others. We perceive only the reflected colors. When light waves strike an object in nature, the object can transmit, absorb, or reflect various individual light waves, depending on the nature of the object and its atomic structure.

How we see Color ¿ ¿ Retina is covered by millions of lightsensitive cells, some shaped like rods and some like cones. Cones are sensitive to different wavelengths of light. 5 -6 million cones in each eye give the brain enough information to interpret colors. ¿ There are three types of cones, each sensitive to a different wavelength-this allows color vision The actual wavelength that the cones are most sensitive to are commonly labeled "red" "green“ and "blue". Rods transmit mostly black and white information to the brain. There are over 120 million of them in each eye. Rods are very sensitive to light, and allow us to see under very low level of illumination. They give us our night vision, in the shades of white, gray and black.

Complementary colors “vibrate” because the brain is receiving opposite signals from the eyes. Rods say that these boxes are the same, cones say they are different.

Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant (grayscale)

¿ Cool colors came from blue hues, such as blue, green and violet. ¿ Warm colors are made up of the red hues, such as red, orange, yellow.

Colors of Light ¿ ¿ ¿ Additive primary colors RGB and its subset CMY form the most basic and well-known color model. Red, green and blue are the additive primary colors of the color spectrum. Additive color systems start without light. Light sources of various wavelengths combine to make a color. (Adding colors of light together. )

¿ ¿ The most common examples of this are television, computer and phone screens. By mixing together various amounts of red, green and blue light, you can make almost any color.

Pigment Colors Primary colors theoretically cannot be mixed from any other colors. ¿ ¿ Color Wheel Secondary colors are a combination of any two adjacent primary colors. Intermediate (Tertiary) colors are a combination of adjacent primary and secondary colors in color wheel.

A subtractive color model explains the mixing of paints, dyes, and inks to create a full range of colors, each caused by subtracting (that is, absorbing) some wavelengths of light and reflecting the others. The color that a surface displays depends on which colors of the white light are reflected by it and therefore made visible. (Subtracting colors out of visible light. )

• So if we see a green car what does that mean? • It means the color that’s being scattered off the surface is green, and all the other colors are being absorbed into the surface.