A Field Guide to Color: Beyond RGBHue
We see color in three dimensions, but there are several sets of three dimensions that work. Primary colors are just one possible trio. Another trio, which has independent usefulness, includes hue, saturation, and lightness.
Hue is where we place a color on the rainbow, and corresponds with the wavelength of light. Most of our basic color terminology is about hue: red, orange, green, blue, purple, etc., are all mainly specifying the hue.
Rather interestingly, hue forms a cycle: it's best described as a color wheel, as depicted to the right.
This may not sound especially groundbreaking, but even here there's some subtlety you may not think about all the time. One note is that yellow and brown aren't necessarily different hues: instead of, say, red, with dark red and light red both being called, well, red, we have a special word for dark yellow that obscures their relationship. Black and white don't have a hue, which means they're desaturated. What does that mean?
Hue
We see color in three dimensions, but there are several sets of three dimensions that work. Primary colors are just one possible trio. Another trio, which has independent usefulness, includes hue, saturation, and lightness.
Hue is where we place a color on the rainbow, and corresponds with the wavelength of light. Most of our basic color terminology is about hue: red, orange, green, blue, purple, etc., are all mainly specifying the hue.
Rather interestingly, hue forms a cycle: it's best described as a color wheel, as depicted to the right.
This may not sound especially groundbreaking, but even here there's some subtlety you may not think about all the time. One note is that yellow and brown aren't necessarily different hues: instead of, say, red, with dark red and light red both being called, well, red, we have a special word for dark yellow that obscures their relationship. Black and white don't have a hue, which means they're desaturated. What does that mean?