Color theory - WikiHQ

right|thumb|[[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's color wheel from his 1810 Theory of Colours]]

Color theory, or more specifically traditional color theory, is a historical body of knowledge describing the behavior of colors — namely in color mixing, color contrast effects, color harmony, color schemes and color symbolism. Color theory and color science both study color and its existence. Traditional color theory tends to be more subjective and have artistic applications, while color science tends to be more objective and have functional applications, such as in chemistry, astronomy or color reproduction. However, there is much intertwining between the two throughout history, and they tend to aid each other in their own evolutions.

Though, color theory can be considered a science unto itself that uses the relationship between human color perception and the interactions of colors together to build their palettes, schemes, and color mixes. Importantly, color theory relies upon objective standards in-order to be consistent in color mixing and presentation – i.e. to achieve the ideal color and effect, your ratios of colors must be consistent and often exact. As for functional applications, color theory, in tandem with color science, is what allows humans to achieve ideal camouflage, design paints that disperse more heat, and is often used by theme parks like Disney to achieve their ideal aesthetic.

Color theory dates back at least as far as Aristotle's treatise On Colors and Bharata's Nāṭya Shāstra. A formalization of "color theory" began in the 18th century, initially within a partisan controversy over Isaac Newton's theory of color (Opticks, 1704), followed by what we considered to be "primary colors", continuing onward for centuries with multiple artists-turned-scientists, and vice versa, putting forth their own color wheels and color theories.

By the end of the 19th century, a schism had formed between color theory and color science due to the schism in humanities and traditional sciences, alongside the rise of Munsell color theory.

History of color theory

Color theory is rooted in antiquity, with early musings on color in Aristotle's (d. 322 BCE) On Colors and Ptolemy's (d. 168 CE) Optics. The Nāṭya Shāstra (d. 200 BCE) composed in Ancient India, had an early, functional theory of color, considering four colors as primary, black, blue, yellow and red. It also describes the production of derived colors from primary colors.

The influence of light on color was investigated and revealed further by al-Kindi (d. 873) and Ibn al-Haytham (d. 1039). Ibn Sina (d. 1037), Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274), and Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253) discovered that contrary to the teachings of Aristotle, there are multiple color paths to get from black to white. More modern approaches to color theory principles can be found in the writings of Leone Battista Alberti (c. 1435) and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1490). In 1613, François d'Aguilon in his book of optics introduced the idea of a three-primary color based system, based in red, yellow, and blue (RYB).thumb|Page from 1826 A New Practical Treatise on the Three Primitive Colours Assumed as a Perfect System of Rudimentary Information by [[Charles Hayter]]

Isaac Newton (d. 1727) worked extensively on color theory, helping and developing his own theory from stating the fact that white light is composed of a spectrum of colors, and that color is not intrinsic to objects, but rather arises from the way an object reflects or absorbs different wavelengths. His 1672 paper on the nature of white light and colors forms the basis for all work that followed on color and color vision.

The RYB color model (based on red-blue-yellow) became the foundation of 18th-century theories of color vision, as the fundamental sensory qualities that are blended in the perception of all physical colors, and conversely, in the physical mixture of pigments or dyes. These theories were enhanced by 18th-century investigations of a variety of purely psychological color effects, in particular the contrast between "complementary" or opposing hues that are produced by color afterimages and in the contrasting shadows in colored light. These ideas and many personal color observations were summarized in two founding documents in color theory: the Theory of Colours (1810) by the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and The Law of Simultaneous Color Contrast (1839) by the French industrial chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul. Charles Hayter published A New Practical Treatise on the Three Primitive Colours Assumed as a Perfect System of Rudimentary Information (London 1826), in which he described how all colors could be obtained from just three.

Physiological theories of color started in the early 19th century with scientist Thomas Young. He hypothetized that humans could only perceive three primary colors (trichromacy) and combine them internally. Later Hermann von Helmholtz, based on Young's work, postulated that humans had three different cone cells for red, green and blue (RGB). This became known as Young–Helmholtz theory. Another issue has been the tendency to describe color effects holistically or categorically, for example as a contrast between "yellow" and "blue" conceived as generic colors instead of the three color attributes generally considered by color science: hue, chroma and value.These confusions are partly historical and arose in scientific uncertainty about color perception that was not resolved until the late 19th century when artistic notions were already entrenched. They also arise from the attempt to describe the highly contextual and flexible behavior of color perception in terms of abstract color sensations that can be generated equivalently by any visual media.

Primary colors

thumb|Primary, secondary, and tertiary colors of the [[RYB color model]]

Traditional color theories asserted that the three pure primary colors could not be created through mixing, but could be used to mix all possible colors. These are sometimes considered as red, yellow and blue (RYB) or as red, green and blue (RGB). Ostensibly, any failure of specific paints or inks to match this ideal performance is due to the impurity or imperfection of the colorants. In contrast, modern color science does not recognize universal primary colors (no finite combination of colors can produce all other colors) and only uses primary colors to define a given color space. Traditional theory also held that primary colors also can't be made from other colors as they were considered inherently pure and distinct.

Secondary colors

Mixing two primary colors together will result in a secondary color. For primary colors red, yellow and blue, the secondary colors are orange, green, and purple. On the color wheel these sit between the primary colors used to create them.

A key assumption in Newton's hue circle was that the "fiery" or maximum saturated hues are located on the outer circumference of the circle, while achromatic white is at the center. Then the saturation of the mixture of two spectral hues was predicted by the straight line between them; the mixture of three colors was predicted by the "center of gravity" or centroid of three triangle points, and so on.

According to traditional color theory based on subtractive primary colors and the RYB color model, yellow mixed with purple, orange mixed with blue, or red mixed with green produces an equivalent gray and are the painter's complementary colors. In 1918, Bonnie Snow and Hugo Froehlich discussed how the subtractive color method can be used to find color triads based on proportions of RYB colors present. They emphasize the importance of not just theorizing about color, but actually using this knowledge of complimentary colors to make the world more beautiful. proponents of split-primary theory explain this lack of chroma by the purported presence of impurities, small amounts of other colors in the paints, or biases away from the ideal primary toward one or the other of the adjacent colors. Every red paint, for example, is said to be tainted with, or biased toward, either blue or yellow, every blue paint toward either red or green, and every yellow toward either green or orange. These biases are said to result in mixtures that contain pairs of complementary colors, darkening the resulting color. To obtain vivid mixed colors, according to split-primary theory, it is necessary to employ two primary colors whose biases both fall in the direction, on the color wheel, of the color to be mixed, combining, for example, green-biased blue and green-biased yellow to make bright green. Based on this reasoning, proponents of split-primary theory conclude that two versions of each primary color, often labeled "cool" and "warm," are needed in order to mix a wide gamut of high-chroma colors.

In fact, the perceived bias of colors is generally not due to impurity. Rather, the appearance of a given colorant is inherent to its chemical and physical properties, its purity unrelated to whether it conforms to our arbitrary conception of an ideal hue. Moreover, the identity of gamut-optimizing primary colors is determined by the physiology of human color vision. Although no set of three primary paints can be mixed to obtain the complete color gamut perceived by humans, red, yellow, and blue are a poor choice if high-chroma mixtures are desired. This is because painting is a subtractive color process, for which red and blue are secondary, not primary, colors.

Although flawed in principle, the split-primary system can be successful in practice, because the recommended blue-biased red and green-biased blue positions are often filled by near approximations of magenta and cyan, respectively, while orange-biased red and violet-biased blue serve as secondary colors, tending to further widen the mixable gamut.

This system is in effect a simplified version of Newton's geometrical rule: that colors closer together on the hue circle will produce more vibrant mixtures. A mixture produced from two primary colors, however, will be much more highly saturated than one produced from two secondary colors, when the pairs are the same distance apart on the hue circle, revealing the limitations of a circular model in the prediction of color-mixing results. For example, a mixture of magenta and cyan inks or paints will produce vivid blues and violets, whereas a mixture of red and blue inks or paints will produce darkened violets and purples, even though the angular distance separating the magenta and cyan is the same as that between the red and blue.

Color contrast

In Michel Eugène Chevreul's 1839 book The principles of harmony and contrast of colours, he introduced the law of color contrast, stating that colors that appear together (spatially or temporally) will be altered as if mixed with the complementary color of the other color, functionally boosting the color contrast between them. For example, a piece of yellow fabric placed on a blue background will appear tinted orange because orange is the complementary color to blue. Chevreul formalized three types of contrast: The difference (as traced by etymologies in the Oxford English Dictionary), seems related to the observed contrast in landscape light, between the "warm" colors associated with daylight or sunset, and the "cool" colors associated with a gray or overcast day. Warm colors are often said to be hues from red through yellow, browns and tans included; cool colors are often said to be the hues from blue-green through blue-violet, most grays included. There is a historical disagreement about the colors that anchor the polarity, but 19th-century sources put the peak contrast between red-orange and greenish-blue.

Color theory has described perceptual and psychological effects to this contrast. Warm colors are said to advance or appear more active in a painting, while cool colors tend to recede; used in interior design or fashion, warm colors are said to arouse or stimulate the viewer, while cool colors calm and relax. However, color harmony is a complex notion because human responses to color are both affective and cognitive, involving emotional response and judgment. Hence, our responses to color and the notion of color harmony is open to the influence of a range of different factors. These factors include individual differences (such as age, gender, personal preference, affective state, etc.) as well as cultural, sub-cultural, and socially-based differences which gives rise to conditioning and learned responses about color. In addition, context always has an influence on responses about color and the notion of color harmony, and this concept is also influenced by temporal factors (such as changing trends) and perceptual factors (such as simultaneous contrast) which may impinge on human response to color. The following conceptual model illustrates this 21st-century approach to color harmony:

: <math>\text{Color harmony} = f(\operatorname{Col} 1, 2, 3, \dots, n) \cdot (ID + CE + CX + P + T)</math>

wherein color harmony is a function (f) of the interaction between color/s (Col 1, 2, 3, …, n) and the factors that influence positive aesthetic response to color: individual differences (ID) such as age, gender, personality and affective state; cultural experiences (CE), the prevailing context (CX) which includes setting and ambient lighting; intervening perceptual effects (P) and the effects of time (T) in terms of prevailing social trends.

In addition, given that humans can perceive around 2.3 million different colors, it has been suggested that the number of possible color combinations is virtually infinite thereby implying that predictive color harmony formulae are fundamentally unsound. Despite this, many color theorists have devised formulae, principles or guidelines for color combination with the aim being to predict or specify positive aesthetic response or "color harmony".

Color wheel models have often been used as a basis for color combination guidelines and for defining relationships between colors. Some theorists and artists believe juxtapositions of complementary color will produce strong contrast, a sense of visual tension as well as "color harmony"; while others believe juxtapositions of analogous colors will elicit a positive aesthetic response. Color combination guidelines (or formulas) suggest that colors next to each other on the color wheel model (analogous colors) tend to produce a single-hued or monochromatic color experience and some theorists also refer to these as "simple harmonies".

In addition, split complementary color schemes usually depict a modified complementary pair, with instead of the "true" second color being chosen, a range of analogous hues around it are chosen, i.e. the split complements of red are blue-green and yellow-green. A triadic color scheme adopts any three colors approximately equidistant around a color wheel model. Feisner and Mahnke are among a number of authors who provide color combination guidelines in greater detail.

Color combination formulae and principles may provide some guidance but have limited practical application. This is due to the influence of contextual, perceptual, and temporal factors which will influence how color/s are perceived in any given situation, setting, or context. Such formulae and principles may be useful in fashion, interior and graphic design, but much depends on the tastes, lifestyle, and cultural norms of the viewer or consumer.

Black and white have long been known to combine "well" with almost any other colors; black decreases the apparent saturation or brightness of colors paired with it and white shows off all hues to equal effect.

Color symbolism

A major underpinning of traditional color theory is that colors carry significant cultural symbolism, or even have immutable, universal meaning. As early as the ancient Greek philosophers, many theorists have devised color associations and linked particular connotative meanings to specific colors. However, connotative color associations and color symbolism tends to be culture-bound and may also vary across different contexts and circumstances. For example, red has many different connotative and symbolic meanings from exciting, arousing, sensual, romantic, and feminine; to a symbol of good luck; and also acts as a signal of danger or a feeling of urgency. While color symbolism and color associations exist, their existence does not provide evidential support for color psychology or claims that color has therapeutic properties.

Notes

References

External links

Understanding Color Theory by University of Colorado Boulder – Coursera
Handprint.com: Color – A comprehensive site about color perception, color psychology, color theory, and color mixing
The Dimensions of Colour – Color theory for artists using digital/traditional media