The Science of Color

(what color is, and how we see it)
 

principles for the web (with additive light) and print (with subtractive pigments);

the basic concepts of primary colors & hue/saturation/brightness & web-safe colors

• Two excellent introductions — simple and clear, brief yet thorough — are Understanding Color and (to explain a wider variety of concepts, including hue, saturation, and brightness, plus grayscale and websafe colors, in 8 short pages) a Color Tutorial.

• Visual summaries of Basic Color Concepts (hue, saturation, brightness) includes a "split out the white" technique for understanding saturation.

• A web-page (and website) with lots of resources to explore, especially for the physiology and psychology of human vision, is from Word-IQ.   { hint: Most of the page, in Sections 1-2 and 4-7, is interesting and easily readable, so don't be dismayed by the mathematical interlude of "Human Color Models" in Section 3, since you can skip it and return later. }
• And how does vision differ between humans and other animals? Ultraviolet Vision

• The 216 web-safe colors are shown, arranged in a table-grid and a flower and a big flower that expands when you click on it.  { The "big flower" page also has resources to explore: Home-Page, Color-FAQ,... }   Lynda explains reasons for modern web-artists to ignore these color limitations (if they don't want to be stuck in a rut from 1997) or (to avoid dithering for the rare websurfers who are still using old 8-bit systems) pay attention to them.  But instead of just 216, how about 4096?  The 4096 web-smart colors are much less artistically limiting, yet are safe (to avoid dithering) on most monitors and computers now being used.  Here are two intro-pages from More Crayons & 4096 Colors. (and later I'll add more pages about color-on-the-web)
 




 
THREE TYPES OF LINKS in this website for Whole-Person Education:
 An ITALICIZED LINK keeps you inside a page, moving you to another part of it. 
 Above, a NON-ITALICIZED LINK is page-adding, opening a new page in a new window
 Below, a NON-ITALICIZED LINK is page-replacing, opening a new page in this window
 
 
Here are some related pages:

homepage for
Science in the Arts

 
This page, written by Craig Rusbult, is
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/teach/color-science.htm

Copyright © 2002 by Craig Rusbult
all rights reserved

Three Types of Links

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