Coming to Terms: Color & Hue

Coming to Terms: Color & Hue

Many of us love to “geek out’ on color…whether it be with tools, materials or terms.  There isn’t always agreement about what each term actually means, and some of them seem to overlap.  Maybe some color terms cannot be neatly tied up in one definition…

Let’s perceive this post as an exploration, an investigation, and a drilling down into some of the color terms we use every day..or, well…often…without perhaps knowing exactly what they mean.  That concept of “exactitude”…might be a little hard to come by, when attempting to define these terms. Perception…that’s the ticket!  We’re going to take this slowly, step-by-step, working (and playing) through the terms, like Noah’s Ark, two by two, starting at the beginning, with Color &  Hue.

What is color? This is one of the best definitions I found:

1. That aspect of things that is caused by differing qualities of the light reflected or emitted by them, definable in terms of the observer or of the light, as:
   1. The appearance of objects or light sources described in terms of the individual’s perception of them, involving hue, lightness, and saturation for objects and hue, brightness, and saturation for light sources.
   2. The characteristics of light by which the individual is made aware of objects or light sources through the receptors of the eye, described in terms of dominant wavelength, luminance, and purity. (http://www.answers.com/topic/color)

   

   In other words: the composition of the light itself, the way the object receiving the light reflects it, and the way our eyes perceive that reflected light.  In other words, in terms of material objects, color isn’t really there…it is an effect of light…how we perceive it.  There is science, physics and optics behind this…but in essence, you might say that color is in the eye of the beholder…

Sometimes color and hue are used interchangeably, but they are not the same.  Hue is an aspect, attribute, or property of color, along with colorfulness, chroma, saturation, lightness, and brightness, (to be explored in  subsequent posts.)

I have often defined hue as “the color of a color”.  hue refers to the variety of colors, or, effects of light, that we see, caused by different wavelengths of light. As regards to paint color, the term “hue” refers to a “pure” colors, colors without black or white pigment added, which comprise the color wheel.

The color of a color.

The term Hue then, is what allows us to perceive different colors. If color is the overall phenomenon, then hue is its  particulars and specifics. Hue is how color plays out in our brains, through our seeing mechanisms, and thus gives us the richness and range of the color pantheon. It is “the attribute of colors that permits them to be classed as red, yellow, green, blue, or an intermediate between any contiguous pair of these colors….”.  A classification system, allowing colors to be identified and named.

Delving into these terms…becomes more complex then you might think…er then “hue” might think? (!).

Here’s to You…and to Hue, and to coming to terms with Color!