COLOR VOCABULARY Properties of Color Hue, Saturation, Value

Hue is color (e.g. red, blue, green, yellow)

Saturation, Intensity, Chroma and Brilliance all refer to how much pigment is in a color, which translates to how vivid a color appears or how pure it is. 

Value is measured by how much white or black is mixed with a hue, or, it can be registered as the grayscale equivalent of a color.  

Temperature is the relative coolness or warmth of a hue. Each color, regardless if it is traditionally cool (green, blue, violet) or warm (red, yellow, orange), can relatively be warm or cool compared to another. For example, cadmium red leans warm because it has a more yellow presence, next to a magenta red that leans cool due to its relationship to violet. 

Shades are a hue mixed with black.

Tints are a hue mixed with white.

Primary colors are pure spectral hues that cannot be mixed from other colors and are used to mix every other color.(These can be Red, Yellow and Blue, but they can also be Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, or Red, Green and Blue depending on the application)

Secondary colors are a color resulting from the mixing of two primary colors (not in always equal parts) 

Tertiary colors are made by mixing one primary color and one secondary color; they are also referred to as intermediate colors.

Complementary colors are opposite on the color wheel. 

Tinting Strength of a color is determined by the type of pigment, the amount of pigment and the fineness of the grinding. The finer the pigment has been ground, the higher the tinting strength. The higher the tinting strength of a paint, the longer it will conserve its color when mixing with white (or other colors)

Inherent value is the relative lightness or darkness of a color. For example: Yellow is an inherently lighter color than Blue. Blue is an inherently darker color than Green.

Luminosity is the quality where a color appears to glow, having an internal inherent light, often because it is surrounded by a darker background.  An intensely saturated dark color will not have luminosity when a much lighter background surrounds the color.  Intensity is not the same as luminosity.

Chromatic Grays are created from mixtures or the tints of complimentary colors. A chromatic gray mixture needs to have a portion of each of the three primary colors to become grayed, or neutralized. Some examples of these mixtures are:  burnt umber and ultramarine blue, burnt umber and purple, orange and blue, green and red, and alizarin crimson and phthalo green.

Illusion of space with color occurs with differences in value, hue, and saturation.  Each layer of space has to have contrasts in order to peel away or toward you on the flat surface of the picture plane.  Warm and bright colors tend to advance; cool and dull colors tend to recede.  The value of what is in front (either light or dark) should, overall, be progressively different from what is behind it. This is also referred to as atmospheric perspective or aerial perspective.   

Retinal Painting is recording what the eye sees very objectively, without regard to detail or excessive modeling of form.  Thus, shadows on snow were a blue tone, not gray.  The shimmering effects of leaves or water were created without resorting to frozen detail. Art of the impressionists introduced this concept.

Optical Mixture, the impressionist concept, when individual small bits of color blend together from a distance.  Optical mixture was used in the past with fabrics, rugs, and mosaics.  Optical mixture was used even more so by the post-impressionist Seurat and is sometimes referred to as pointillism. 

Color Anomaly (or accent) is a color that really sticks out from an overall color scheme.  This jarring color can harmonize with the rest of the color scheme if it is mixed into some of the other colors to create harmonizing bridge tones.

Proportional Color Inventory is a way to analyze a design by simplifying the colors in a composition into the proportional areas they occupy.  A color composition might be translated into parallel bands of flat colors that have various widths.

Color schemes (or palettes) are defined by where  they fall on the color wheel. Color schemes have different purposes and are used to create different feelings and effects within creative design. The four most common color schemes are known as Complementary, Analogous, Split Complementary and Triadic colors.

Color Harmony is the result of choosing a color scheme that works well. It is not too loud, or too boring. Not too busy, and not too plain. The colors chosen should help each other and not try to outshine each other. Harmony is a fine line where a color pallet has enough interest to hold a viewer's attention, but not so much that the viewer is overwhelmed.

Complementary Colors are colors that are opposite on the color wheel. Opposing colors on the color wheel are dramatically different and because of this they will create a high impact jolt when paired together. Complementary colors are frequently used to draw attention and emphasis to a particular space within a design and can be quite effective when used in small doses. However a complementary color scheme is difficult to get right when used in large applications and should be avoided for text. You can also tone down a color by mixing in its complement. 

Analogous Colors (adjacent) Analogous color scheme is any one of a group of three colors that are side by side on the color wheel. For example: red, orange, and yellow are analogous colors. It can be tricky to ensure that enough contrast exists when using this type of color scheme and it’s recommended that one color is chosen as the feature color, whilst the other two colors take a supportive role. Analogous color schemes can create a calm and relaxed feel. 

Triadic Colors The Triadic color scheme consists of three colors that are spaced evenly around the color wheel; when the colors are linked by a straight line, they form an equilateral triangle. The three colors used in this scheme tend to sit well together and can be quite lively and harmonious. As with the Analogous color scheme it is recommended that one color govern the design while using the other two colors to complement.

Split Complementary Colors This color scheme is similar to the complementary color scheme but with a small difference. A base color is chosen, and then the two colors on either side of that based color’s complimentary color are used. Using this color scheme you will get a combination of one warm and two cold colors (or vice versa).

Tetradic Color Harmony (rectangle) In a Tetradic color harmony we use a combination of four colors that consist of two complementary color pairs.  For example: purple and blue green plus yellow green and red.    

Square Color Harmony In a Square color harmony we use a combination of four colors equally spaced around the color wheel. For example: orange, yellow-green, blue and violet.  

Color Blindness A quick word of caution: Red and green, two complementary colors, present a sticky problem. Some people have color blindness and cannot distinguish between certain colors, and red and green are a common problematic combination. Colors with heavy amounts of red and green in them get bungled up, too. Deuteranope, protanope, and tritanope.