

Speaking about color: hue, value, saturation, chroma, shade, tint, tone - DiamondsSteak
http://www.landor.com/?do=thinking.blog&post_id=23223

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__david__
He says "value", but he seems to mean "lightness". See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV> for a discussion (and neat graphs)
of the differences between the two. I really like using HSL to choose colors
since it is very intuitive (much more than RGB) and it's really nice to
programmatically choose similar colors by just tweaking the saturation and
lightness parameters.

~~~
jacobolus
First, _value_ and _lightness_ are synonyms in this context. The name _value_
comes from the Munsell system, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsell> near the
beginning of the 20th century, and the name _lightness_ is what color
scientists finally settled on a few decades later. Unfortunately the terms’
usage in the HSL and HSV models doesn’t have terribly much to do with the
human-vision-relevant definition.

It’s too bad that the author of the linked-to post claims that _chroma_ and
_saturation_ mean the same thing though. They don’t.

Anyhow, thanks, I’m glad you liked the pictures (I drew many of them). If
there’s anything about that HSL/HSV article that could use improvement, feel
free to comment here or send me an email (or you could of course leave a
message on the wiki talk page).

For what it’s worth, I don’t think HSL is very intuitive. It’s basically the
same thing as RGB, just tilted on one end and squished a bit into a cylinder
shape (as shown here e.g., <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hsl-and-
hsv.svg>). For some discussion of why, see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV#Disadvantages> but the short
explanation is: HSL is a model designed for the hardware limitations of 1970s
workstations, and much more perceptually relevant models are computationally
cheap enough today.

~~~
__david__
I find that HSL is intuitive when I'm trying to get some similar colors
together for a UI element where I need kind of a gray version and a highlight
version in addition to the base color. The grey is just saturation dropped and
the highlight is some extra lightness. If the hue stays the same then
everything matches nicely. That's much harder for me to do directly in RGB.

What do you think is a more intuitive model? I'm always happy to learn
something new.

I think the wikipedia page is great--I've used the math on it to write
conversion routines in the past.

~~~
jacobolus
If you just drop the HSL "saturation" to get a gray, you quite dramatically
change the lightness in many cases.

More intuitive models:

Munsell Color System (related to rigorous experiment in the "Renotations" of
the 40s. Many later models were attempts to model Munsell space with a closed
formula instead of the lookup table that defines the Munsell System itself):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsell_color_system>

CIELAB, the de facto standard for many decades in colorimetry, used for
example in many color management modules, defined in the mid-70s. (pretty weak
article) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space>

IPT: I have no great links handy, but there's a mention here
[http://documentation.apple.com/en/color/usermanual/index.htm...](http://documentation.apple.com/en/color/usermanual/index.html#chapter=8%26section=3%26tasks=true)

CIECAM02, the 2002 recommendation of the technical committee scientists
studying this stuff, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIECAM02>

------
prawn
Not sure if it'd be useful to people here, but years back I wrote a few
chapters for a book: Web Graphics for Non-Designers. Parts of one of my
chapters, Using Color, were made available as an excerpt to read here:

[http://www.webreference.com/authoring/graphics/color/nondesi...](http://www.webreference.com/authoring/graphics/color/nondesigners/chap2/)

Not sure if any of the screenshots date it embarrassingly, but it might be
useful to someone wanting to become more comfortable with their colour use.

~~~
jacobolus
To be honest (and I mean no offense), a lot of that material is somewhat
misleading. For example, this statement,

> “At the heart of basic color theory lie the three Primary colors: red,
> yellow, and blue,”

comes straight out of the 19th century (or the 17th) – for coverage of primary
colors see <http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color6.html> – and this:

> “Intensity: Also known as saturation or chromaticity”

is not the way those terms are used today by people trying to use precise
terminology. _Intensity_ is reserved for counts of photons, _chromaticity_
encompasses two dimensions, and as you describe it what you’re really talking
about is _chroma_ , not _saturation_.

All the stuff about triadic and tetradic and alternate complementary schemes,
while it seems to be popular among some “color theorists” (whatever that
means) is pseudoscientific creation of jargon divorced from any evidence-based
underlying structure.

Edit: definitely take a look at the Maureen Stone SIGGRAPH course notes for
something pretty accessible and good,
[http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs448b-02-spring/04cdro...](http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs448b-02-spring/04cdrom.pdf)

~~~
prawn
I must acknowledge your superior knowledge in this space (and upvote!) and
perhaps excuse my effort back then by saying that the publishers were after
something fairly accessible - perhaps a shortcut to creating something
attractive despite not being a designer first and foremost. If I were
introduced to colour/design via the link you provided, I would've run away
screaming. :)

When I design, the colour choices just come naturally. I've never consciously
made decisions based on the schemes listed (though they often fit those), so
it's one of those things that's difficult to describe in a single chapter
within a 10mm thick book, or even at all.

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sahillavingia
Interesting article. Really though, a lot of it is more the connotation (this
has too high contrast = too much saturation) vs. definition (the tint should
be moved 56 to the right). One of my side projects tries to help people
understand these relationships between color [1]. Really, the easiest thing to
do is show the a color wheel (kuler rocks for this).

[1] - <http://colorstreamapp.com/>

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huhtenberg
> Shade means to add black to a color and _deepen it in value_

This is really useful bit of information to keep in mind when working with
colors - darkening a color requires not only decreasing its L (lightness), but
also increasing its saturation (S). Without that the color will loose their
intensity and will appear more gray-ish. It took me over a year to arrive at
this empirically, so designer wannabes do pay attention here :-)

~~~
jacobolus
This is likely an artifact of working in a color model which badly describes
the relation between lightness and chroma or lightness and saturation.

If you manipulated colors in a more reasonable color space (this is the fault
of tool designers, not users) then you wouldn’t have to spend extra steps of
indirection to change the (visually relevant) parameters you care about.

(Edit: and to be clear, my frustration is completely directed at all the
software that uses HSL, not at its users.)

~~~
huhtenberg
Yep, I agree. However the conventional HSL model found in pretty much all
graphic software has the problem I described.

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ljegou
The best (scientifically sound and recent) information about color perception
i found is in Colin Ware books :

\- Information Visualization : perception for design (chapter 4 about color)

\- Visual Thinking (more accessible).

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sz
So where are the RGB coordinates on there?

