Colour Theory
MOD003232
03/02/2014
9:00-12:00am
In today's lecture I was learning colour theory. In the colour theory I learned some interesting information about how we see colour, primary colours, psychology of colours, web safe colours etc.
How do we see colour?
When light hits an object, the object absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest of it. Which wavelengths are reflected or absorbed depends on the properties of the object. When you look at an object, the wavelengths of the reflected light determine what colour you see. The light waves reflect off the object and hit the light sensitive retina at the back of your eye. Cones are a type of photoreceptor, the tiny cells in the retina that respond to light. Rods are another type of photoreceptor, rods are more sensitive than cones, however they are not sensitive to colour. Rods are responsible for our dark-adapted/scotopic vision.
Primary Colours
Primary colours are sets of colours that can be combined to create a range of different colours (Secondary colours). Red, Yellow and Blue are colours that cannot be created by combining other colours.
Red + Blue = Purple
Red + Yellow = Orange
Yellow + Blue = Green
Colour Models
-RGB (Red, Green, Blue)
This model is a cube model which shows the depth of each red, green and blue colours.
- CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key)
Colour Picker
Colour picker's are good for showing web safe colours that are available and also show the hexadecimal value that you can use in HTML coding.
Psychology of Colour
Red- Passion, aggressiveness, strength, vitality.
Pink- femininity, innocence, softness, health.
Orange- fun, cheeriness, warm exuberance.
Yellow- positivity, sunshine, cowardice.
Green- tranquility, health, freshness.
Blue- authority, dignity, security, faithfulness.
Purple- sophistication, spirituality, costliness, royalty and mystery.
Brown- utility, earthiness, woodiness and subtle richness.
White- purity, truthfulness, being contemporary and refined.
Grey- somberness, authority, practicality and a corporate mentality.
Black- seriousness, distinctiveness, boldness and being classic.
*The psychology of colours should be always taken into account when creating multimedia and web content. Colours vary in meanings and emotions that a particular audience can assign to colour. When making colour decisions, it is important to determine the target audience in order to convey the right message. Colour should be carefully selected to align with the key message and emotions being conveyed. Research has also been found that females and males prefer different colours.
Web-Safe Colours
Web safe colours are those that will be displayed the same on any browser.
*There are only a small amount of web safe colours and these are better to be chosen because if an unsafe web colour is chosen the computer will automatically skip to the closest web safe colour however this may not be anywhere near the colour you chose.
Colour Wheel
-Cool Colours(Blue, Green, Violet)
-Warm Colours(Red, Orange, Yellow)
Complimentary colours are positioned opposite each other on the colour wheel if these are used together these can be intense & glaring.
*It is best not to use colours that are positioned opposite each other on the colour wheel as these can be intense and glaring but also may look very unprofessional.
Terminology
Hue: (Colour) Red, green, pink
Saturation: The intensity of a colour.
High Saturation: Stronger, Richer colours
Low Saturation: Grey, washed out colours
Tint: White added to a colour
Shade: Black added to a colour
Colour Blindness
Normal
Protanopic- Colour blindness of red colours.
Deuteranopic- Colour blindness of green colours.
Tritanopic- Colour blindness of yellow colours.
*It is wise to choose colours that all people will be able to view and is accessible for everyone. Therefore maybe having a black line around text if it is coloured so then colour blind people would be able to see the text or another way of making a website more accessible for colour blind people would be to include alt-text to label images etc. Also using reds and greens together may not be a great option as reds and greens are often indistinguishable.
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