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[ 47 ]WHAT IS COLOR?
Okay, the answer to that question seems a bit obvious
because everyone knows what color is in theory; but how
it’s defined by software, cameras, browsers, and more is
dependent on many things. It’s sort of like saying, “Hey,
that’s a green light!” but your friend, who’s color-blind,
may see a different color. It all depends on how the brain...
err, computer...is defining that color. Frustrated and con-
fused already? Let’s try to clear this up in the world of
digital imaging so we can start building our foundation for
understanding color.
With regard to digital imaging, and more specifically
programs such as Photoshop, color can be measured differ-
ently than it can be defined to the software. You’ve prob-
ably heard of hue, saturation, and brightness (or lightness
in some programs). For anyone new to this subject, here’s a
quick lesson:- Hue is another word for color.
- Hue is measured on a 360° wheel, and all colors
exist somewhere on the wheel. - Saturation is the intensity (some would say density)
of that color. - Without saturation you only have shades of gray,
or tones. - Brightness is the amount of light provided, allowing
you to see a color and its amount of saturation. It’s also
represented by tones, or luminosity in some areas.
Imagine for a second that you have a piece of fabric on
a table. In this example, we’ll say it’s red. If you put a light
on that piece of fabric, then you can see it. It’s illuminated
so you know it’s red. If there were no light in the room and
someone asked you the color of the fabric, you’d have to
say, “I don’t know because everything is black.” It’s not
really black; it’s an absence of light. But that light could also
be really powerful. In fact, it could be so strong that all you
see is a white spot. It could overpower the color of the red
fabric and be seen as mostly white.
The visibility of that color, or the hue, is dependent on
how much light is used to display it. This is why if you
were to alter the brightness of a pixel, its saturation value
would also change. Because when you have a vibrant-red
piece of fabric, it will look dull when the light is reduced
to near-dark levels, and it will look washed-out and faded
when the brightness is increased to a level that’s nearly a
bright white light.
HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) is the only way in
Photoshop that we can measure the color (hue) separately
from the amount of saturation and light used in that mix.
Hue is a 360° wheel, so when you’re looking at a Hue
spectrum in Photoshop, you’ll see the same color appear
at both ends as shown in the examples below. But here’s
the problem: pixels can’t be defined by HSB values to
the software. In fact, the color degree value that we see
when measuring the hue is dependent, and relative, to
how those pixels are defined by the software.©Adobe Stock/simone_n
Decorative background design elements ©Adobe Stock/kotoffei