Khaled Al Raquib

Final Year,
B.Sc. in Optometry
Faculty of Medicine, University OF
Chittagong
 Three colormaking attributes, hue, lightness and
chroma,
 provide the best description of conscious color
judgments
 Hue, lightness and chroma
 describe related and unrelated color judgments very
well,
 and quite often remain subjectively constant under
normal changes in the illuminantion
    
 

  Hue identifies
  the dominant   
Lightness or value identifies the
or "average" wavelengths of light . total quantity of light.

Saturation identifies the spectral

purity of light.
 Hue
 This is the most familiar color attribute.
 It is the quality we identify with a common color
name such as red, green, yellow or blue.
 The example below shows several different hues of
equal lightness (tonal value) and color intensity.
 Lightness
 The second colormaking attribute
 Lightness or value is determined by
 the total quantity of light reaching the eye from all parts
of the visible spectrum
 the light or dark of a color as a source of emitted or
reflected light.
 Brightness refers
 to the total amount of light emitted by a light or
reflected from a surface (an unrelated color attribute),
 Lightness
 Lightness refers
 to the amount of light reflected by a surface in
comparison to a white surface under the same
illumination (a related color attribute)
 artist's commonly call the tonal value or simply value
of a color.
 Lightness remains constant across fairly large changes
in the intensity of light, but brightness does not
 The example below shows variations in tonal value
for a constant dull (unsaturated) middle blue hue.
 Chroma
 the first two colormaking attributes are familiar,
 the third attribute is harder for many artists to
understand clearly
 it is the intensity or purity of hue, regardless of how
light or dark it is.
 An intense or highly chromatic color looks very
luminous or concentrated, just as if it came through a
prism, while
 A color with low chroma looks dull, gray, faded or
diluted. The example shows variations in chroma in a
scarlet red of constant hue and lightness.
 Chroma - often refer as the term saturation,
 But strictly speaking these represent
 different ways to define color intensity
 Saturation is an unrelated color attribute, because
 the chromatic intensity of a light is judged in relation to the
light's own brightness (it is only compared to itself)
 It is used when viewing
 traffic signals, neon signs at night, the color of refracting or
iridescent gems
 Saturation represents the spectral purity of a color,
 the variety of different wavelengths that make up the color.
 Single wavelength or monospectral lights
 are always maximally saturated.
 Chroma is used when
 describing the intensity of color in paints or
paintings.
 Saturation can also be defined as
 a related color judgment, simply by making the
comparison to a gray surface of the same lightness as
the color
 As related color attributes, both saturation and
chroma
 are relatively constant across changes in
illumination.
 Chroma (or saturation) is easily confused to
lightness.
 The basic problem is that color intensity
(saturation) is easy to confuse with light
intensity (brightness).
 The range of chroma decreases in darker
values, but the range of saturation does not.
 Artists judge paints according to chroma, not
saturation.
  Lightness or tonal value
increases vertically from
black (bottom) to white
(top), along equal steps of a
gray scale or value scale.
 Chroma changes
horizontally in equal
perceptual steps from
achromatic (gray) at left to
maximum chroma at right.
 Saturation is the amount of
chroma in relation to the
amount of light in a color,
radiate outwards and upwards
Lightness, Chroma and Saturation from the pure black value.
(S) for a red violet hue
  The vertical black to white
dimension is the lightness or
value of a color;
 The horizontal plane
perpendicular to this
dimension is the hue of a
color; and
 The lateral distance or radius
from the center outwards is
the chroma (and
approximately the saturation)
of a color.
 Hues change gradually from
one to the next, but chroma
and lightness starts from a
definite zero point.
The geometrical arrangement of colormaking
attributes
in modern color models.
 These three colormaking attributes completely
define any color sensation:
 Lightness or value identifies
 the proportion of the total illumination that is
reflected by a surface;
 Saturation or chroma usually indicates
 what proportion of the reflected wavelengths comes
from a narrow part of the spectrum; and
 Hue is the location of
 those wavelengths within the total span of the color
circle.
 The earliest approach to color was
 to develop an implicit color naming system
 This piecemeal approach to color naming was
 trumped in 1704 when Isaac Newton offered his color
circle
 Arguably the first complete and geometrically
consistent color model was described by
 the German artist Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810) in his
Farbenkugel (Color Sphere) of 1810.
 Michel-Eugène Chevreul followed with his own "color
hemisphere" in 1839, and abstract color systems became
one of the minor achievements of 19th century European
scientists — and the artists who studied their works.
 Nearly all modern color models are based on
 a specific method of color measurement.
 This measurement is necessary because
 we have to accurately connect an external light or
surface with an internal color sensation
 There are many ways to measure color.
 The Munsell Book of Color is
 the first modern color model,
 based on the three colormaking attributes: hue,
lightness and chroma
 implemented through careful color measurement.
 contains over 1200 color chips or smaller edition.
 conceived by the American artist Albert H.
Munsell (1858-1918), who was the first researcher
to document conclusively the basic color fact.
 Munsell was able to
 simulate incremental steps in chroma
(proportional mixtures with gray) or hue (by
proportional mixtures of "primary" colors, or
analogous colors such as red and yellow), and
 to identify visual complementary color
 In this way Munsell devised methods
 to analyze all physically possible reflective or
surface colors into their component lightness, hue
and chroma, and
 to measure their apparent differences on each of
these color-making attributes.
 The characteristics of the equivalent
stimuli are:
 A hue circle is defined by
 Five equally spaced color dimensions — red (R),
yellow (Y), green (G), blue (B) and purple (P).
 supplemented by five mixture hues (YR, GY,
BG, PB & RP),
 each segment is calibrated into ten equal hue
steps (1 to 10) in clockwise order around the
wheel, making 100 hue units.
 Vertical value
 corresponds most closely to a lightness scale from
black to white
 contains only 11 steps, with black designated 0
and white 10.
 Chroma
 Corresponds to a purity scale
 Based on estimates of saturation
 Chroma scale has 16 steps from the achromatic
(gray) axis
 Not all munsell hues can reach up to 16 steps
  Colors are "named"
through the standard
notation hue value/chroma.
 Thus, the color
"vermilion" would be
notated as 8.5R 5.5/12- a
hue of 8.5 in the R
segment, at
value/lightness 5.5 and
chroma 12.
 Any physically realizable
surface color (paint, ink
or dye) can be located
within the Munsell
framework by using
Conceptual framework of the decimal increments on
munsell color system (1905) the hue, value and
chroma dimensions.
  The most important
complications in color
perception is:
different hues reach
their maximum
chroma at different
values.
 Each of the 12 hues of
the tertiary color
wheel with the value
0 (for black) at the
center, the value 10
(for white) at the
circumference, and
value steps of 2
indicated by the
concentric circles.
lightness of maximum chroma for different
hues; based on the maximum chroma for hue
sections in the Munsell Book of Color;
  He demonstrated
that most colors
could be
 created by
combinations of three
"primary" colors.
 He then devised an
equilateral color
triangle (the
"Maxwell triangle")
 to represent precisely
any color as the
additive proportions
of red, green and blue
that visually matched
it.

James clerk maxwell's trichromatic mixing triangle (c.1860)

the sum of the additive "primaries" red, green, and blue (exemplified
by vermilion, emerald green, & ultramarine blue) always add up to 1.
 CIE System
 The color mixing of light is
still not explained with a
color triangle,
 It is a curved triangle called
a chromaticity diagram that is
adapted to represent the
actual limits of color vision.
 One of the most recent of
these is CIELUV, a
trichromatic color
appearance model proposed
in 1976 (along with the
opponent processing color
model CIELAB).
 In CIELUV the color of any
visible light can be specified
as a combination of the three
additive primaries R, G &
blue violet.
CIELUV chromaticity diagram:
a trichromatic color model
the NCS color model
 This system was developed by
 the International Commission of Illumination (CIE-
Commission Internal de Eclairage)
 It is primarily for
 a precise identification of colors for such items as
textiles, paints, food coloring products and soil
types.
 CIE color space system is based on
 the amounts of three primary colors necessary to
match a specified color.
 CIELAB is one of the most recent books
published.
 Relative amounts of primaries are denoted
 by x,y, & z.
 The relative amount of each primary (x,y,z)
required to match or specify a given wavelength
results in a set of tristimulus values.i.e.
containing certain value of each primary
 Of the three primaries, only two are required to
specify the chromaticity of a color.
 So their sum, x+y+z=1
 Hence only 2 of the three primaries
 (x & y) need to be specified.
 z = 1-(x+y), i.e. x & y coordinates is adequate
 in specification of chromaticness of that stimulus.
 Thus the values of x, y& z provide
 complete color specification for the equivalent
stimulus.