Color Standards and Color Nomenclature: With fifty-three colored plates and eleven hundred and fifteen named colorsRidgway, Robert
Science
Color Standards and Color Nomenclature: With fifty-three colored plates and eleven hundred and fifteen named colors
Ridgway, Robert
Colors
_Broken Color._—Any one of the spectrum colors or hues dulled or
reduced in purity by admixture (in any proportion) of neutral gray, or
varying relative proportions of both black and white; also produced
by admixture of certain spectrum colors, as red with green, orange
with blue, yellow with violet, etc. These broken colors are far more
numerous in Nature than the pure spectrum colors, and include the
almost infinite variations of brown, russet, citrine, olive, drab, etc.
They are often called dull or neutral colors.
_Fundamental Colors._—The six psychologically distinct colors of the
solar spectrum; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Violet.
_Primary Colors._—Theoretically, any of the spectrum colors which
cannot be made by mixture of two other colors. According to the
generally accepted Young-Helmholtz theory, the primary colors are
red, green, and violet: orange and yellow resulting from a mixture of
red and green, and blue from a mixture of green and violet. There is
considerable difference of opinion, however, as to this question, and
further investigation of the subject seems to be required; at any rate,
authorities fail to explain why red may be exactly reproduced (except
as to the degree of luminosity) by a mixture of orange and violet,
exactly as yellow results from mixture of red and green or blue from
green or violet, green being, in fact, the only spectrum color that
cannot be made by mixture of other colors.[24]
_Chroma._—Degree of freedom from white light; purity, intensity or
fullness of color.
_Luminosity._—Degree of brightness or clearness. The relative
luminosity of the spectrum colors is as follows: [Yellow (brightest)?],
orange yellow; orange; greenish-yellow, yellow-green, and green;
orange-red; red and blue (equal); violet-blue, blue-violet, violet.[25]
_Warm Colors._—The colors nearer the red end of the spectrum or those
of longer wave-lengths (red, orange, and yellow, and connecting hues)
"and combinations in which they predominate."[26]
_Cool, or Cold, Colors._—The colors nearer the violet end of
the spectrum or those of shorter wave-length, especially blue and
green-blue. "But it is, perhaps, questionable whether green and violet
may be termed either warm or cool."
_Complementary Color._—"As white light is the sum of all color, if
we take from white light a given color the remaining color is the
complement of the given color." When any two colors or hues which when
combined in proper proportion on the color-wheel produce, by rotation,
neutral gray, these two colors each represent the complementary of the
other.
_Constants of Color._—The constants of color are numbers which measure
(1) the wave-length, (2) the chroma, and (3) the luminosity.
In addition to the terms defined above there are many others, for which
the reader is referred to the chapter on "Color Definitions" on pages
23-30 of Milton Bradley's excellent and most useful book "Elementary
Color."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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