Basic Color Theory For Photography and Imaging

Emission Vs. Reflection of Light

Photography is all about capturing photons.

[Directly Emission]: Light sources such as the sun, a lamp a computer monitor, send out waves of photons (minute energy packages, particles without a mass)

[Indirectly Reflection]: We see things other than light sources, indirectly through reflection.

Dark surfaces will absorb most of the incoming light while the bright surfaces will reflect most of it.

A RED object let say red rose will absorb the green and blue components of light and only reflects RED light.

A monitor creates RED light by turning off green and blue color and leaving RED on

Additive RGB Colors

Colors of light sources, such as LCD, is described with RGB colors.

Combining all additive primary colors will generate "WHITE".

Subtractive CMYk Colors

CMYk: Cyan Magenta Yellow and Black

Colors of light reflecting objects are described with CMYk colors.

Combining primary subtractive colors will generate "BLACK".

LAB Color Space

LAB Color Spaces (Visible Color Space)

Image reproduction devices (monitor, printer etc) are unable to produce all visible colors.

sRGB: Standard RGB (monitors)

CMYk: Cyan Magenta Yellow and Black (Printers)

Hue

We could reshape LAB diagram into an hexagon.

Corners containing primary colors and complementary colors.

Orange is in between Red and Yellow.

Each color on the hexagon (or color wheel) is a "Hue".

It is defined by its angle in counterclockwise.

Yellow is 60 degree and combination of Pure Red and Pure Green.

Here is how pure yellow is generated.
60 degree Hue.
Full saturation and full brightness.

In other way;
That makes only combination of pure RED and pure GREEN but no BLUE component.

If this had been a surface we could say RED and GREEN is fully reflected while BLUE is absorbed. That is the reflection of yellow.

Saturation

Mixing all primary additive colors will create WHITE.

White has 0% saturation, so called «de-saturated».

Brightness

Pure color has 100 % saturation around the edges of hexagon and white has 0% saturation.

WHITE corresponds to 100% brightness while BLACK corresponds to 0%.

In between there are levels of gray.

Reducing saturation means increasing the amount of gray.

As color gets darker, the difference between center and edges becomes smaller. 

HSB Color Model
Hue
Saturation
Brightness

Select a color component to generate a color

Yet another Color generator tool that is supporting similar color models to HSB. It also enable suitable colors to use in web design. Select a color see suitable others and decide background, foreground, text color etc.

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