Practical Color Theory for People Who Code
tallys.github.io
Practical Color Theory for People Who Code
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Re: Practical Color Theory for People Who Code
#2Ugh. This is well meaning, but because based on a color model with a very tenuous relation to human color perception, with further decisions built on loose heuristics without rigorous support (and apparently ported from paint mixing advice), the choices made are pretty arbitrary, yielding poor results.
This part in particular ...
> Pick any color by selecting its hue (0-360) on the color wheel at full saturation (100%) and at half lightness (50%) - this way you start with the 'most colorful color' you can get. ¶ Generate your second color without having to guess what will work. Thanks to science and wavelengths, we know that this works. The opposition of these two colors stimulate your photoreceptor cells in a good way!
... ends up being poor advice in general, “science and wavelengths” notwithstanding. Any pair of decently separated hues will do just as well as a pair of HSL “complements”, as long as the chroma and lightness are carefully chosen. If you take this specific advice and just rotate the hue around in HSL space, all of the perceptual color relationships will swing wildly.
Someone following this program who has a lot of experience with visual art / design will end up making reasonable choices based on intuition and past experience, but that will be in spite of this guide, not because of it.
Sorry to be harsh, but in my opinion non-experts will get better results than this blog post’s recommendations by just choosing perceptual lightness (e.g. in CIELAB space) of each color to have sufficient contrast, and then picking the hue/chroma entirely at random, or using any other desired criteria.
Here’s what Cynthia Brewer, expert in color choices for maps and diagrams, had to say about models like HSL and HSV:
> Computer science offers a few poorer cousins to these perceptual spaces that may also turn up in your software interface, such as HSV and HLS. They are easy mathematical transformations of RGB, and they seem to be perceptual systems because they make use of the hue–lightness/value–saturation terminology. But take a close look; don’t be fooled. Perceptual color dimensions are poorly scaled by the color specifications that are provided in these and some other systems. For example, saturation and lightness are confounded, so a saturation scale may also contain a wide range of lightnesses (for example, it may progress from white to green which is a combination of both lightness and saturation). Likewise, hue and lightness are confounded so, for example, a saturated yellow and saturated blue may be designated as the same ‘lightness’ but have wide differences in perceived lightness. These flaws make the systems difficult to use to control the look of a color scheme in a systematic manner. If much tweaking is required to achieve the desired effect, the system offers little benefit over grappling with raw specifications in RGB or CMY.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/cab38/ColorSch/ASApaper.html
If anyone is looking for a better resource, the best one I know of on the web is http://www.handprint.com/LS/CVS/color.html. Otherwise, I recommend going straight to books. There are a variety of available books at every level of technical detail.
Re: Practical Color Theory for People Who Code
#3Do you guys know of any solid guides on how to use and mix and match colors in photography and video making to evoke certain specific emotions? It's easy to find materials on entry level color theory "here are complementary colors, here is a triad etc" but I haven't been able to find a good resource on how to use those coloring choices to influence viewer reactions. Seems like something everybody in the visual arts eventually has to master but also seems very undocumented, like a black art.
Re: Practical Color Theory for People Who Code
#4Do you guys know of any solid guides on how to use and mix and match colors in photography and video making to evoke certain specific emotions? It's easy to find materials on entry level color theory "here are complementary colors, here is a triad etc" but I haven't been able to find a good resource on how to use those coloring choices to influence viewer reactions. Seems like something everybody in the visual arts e…
The links between colors and emotions are (at least somewhat) culturally specific and subjective. There have been some efforts to classify specific cultures’ associations and preferences which you can find in a search of the academic literature. It’s hard to find much rigorous material on the subject though.
You can of course also find many artists and art teachers with grandiose personal theories about the subject.
My recommendation is to just put the time and work into learning your own personal preferences, by doing your own color exercises. For some design-y ideas about exercises to try see e.g. Josef Albers’s book. For photography, the best training IMO is to just make and look at lots of pictures.
Re: Practical Color Theory for People Who Code
#5Do you guys know of any solid guides on how to use and mix and match colors in photography and video making to evoke certain specific emotions? It's easy to find materials on entry level color theory "here are complementary colors, here is a triad etc" but I haven't been able to find a good resource on how to use those coloring choices to influence viewer reactions. Seems like something everybody in the visual arts e…
I'm in the field (recent MA in art).
Colour theory, beyond the important concept of complementaries, is very unscientific. I'm not aware of any credible, rigorous scientific findings about colour and emotion that are actually used by artists. (I'm not saying that no credible research will ever exist: see links here https://designshack.net/articles/graphics/the-science-behind... )
Painters (etc.) choose and apply colour in an intuitive way. Some artists are known as "colourists" for their skill in orchestrating colour effects. The way to learn is to look at that kind of work and absorb the aesthetic.
Re: Practical Color Theory for People Who Code
#6Do you guys know of any solid guides on how to use and mix and match colors in photography and video making to evoke certain specific emotions? It's easy to find materials on entry level color theory "here are complementary colors, here is a triad etc" but I haven't been able to find a good resource on how to use those coloring choices to influence viewer reactions. Seems like something everybody in the visual arts e…
I'm in the field (recent MA in art). Colour theory, beyond the important concept of complementaries, is very unscientific. I'm not aware of any credible, rigorous scientific findings about colour and emotion that are actually used by artists. (I'm not saying that no credible research will ever exist: see links here https://designshack.net/articles/graphics/the-science-behind... ) Painters (etc.) choose and apply colo…
That's been my experience as well when trying to learn from artists who do this. As you said, they most often will simply follow their intuition built over many years of trying different things and learning what seems to cause what kind of result. It'd certainly be neat to shortcut that process, I don't think there's anything magical about it, it's just that people have likely never had to bother.
Re: Practical Color Theory for People Who Code
#7I really wish color-related talks and tools would upgrade to wider-than-sRGB color gamuts, now that many modern devices can display them.
Re: Practical Color Theory for People Who Code
#8Ugh. This is well meaning, but because based on a color model with a very tenuous relation to human color perception, with further decisions built on loose heuristics without rigorous support (and apparently ported from paint mixing advice), the choices made are pretty arbitrary, yielding poor results. This part in particular ... > Pick any color by selecting its hue (0-360) on the color wheel at full saturation (100…
Someone making a color scheme for a chart needs to be very rigorous indeed, because color is actually how the data is represented, in some cases.
The tutorial seems to be aimed at front-end developers that want to put together a color scheme for a website. In this case, color is more like decoration, so it doesn't need to be as rigorous, IMHO.
Re: Practical Color Theory for People Who Code
#9Ugh. This is well meaning, but because based on a color model with a very tenuous relation to human color perception, with further decisions built on loose heuristics without rigorous support (and apparently ported from paint mixing advice), the choices made are pretty arbitrary, yielding poor results. This part in particular ... > Pick any color by selecting its hue (0-360) on the color wheel at full saturation (100…
Someone making a color scheme for a chart needs to be very rigorous indeed, because color is actually how the data is represented, in some cases. The tutorial seems to be aimed at front-end developers that want to put together a color scheme for a website. In this case, color is more like decoration, so it doesn't need to be as rigorous, IMHO.
My basic claim is that contrast in perceived lightness (a.k.a. value, in Munsell’s terminology) is the most salient color attribute in graphic design.
This is based on the architecture of human vision. When light comes into the retina, it is measured by three different types of detectors called cone cells (“long” L, “medium” M, and “short” S). But the independent signals from these cone cells are not directly passed to the visual cortex. Instead, at the first layer of processing, the cone cell responses are combined into 3 different signals, a brightness response (L + M), and two color difference signals, yellow–blue (L + M – S) and red–green (L – M). The brightness signal has the finest resolution, and is used for detection of edges, textures, fine details, motion, depth, and so on. The color difference signals are layered on top of that. “Lightness” or “value” is a perceived attribute of surface color based on the brightness response. (Caveat: this is a pretty simplified description.)
Almost any color scheme you choose which has enough lightness contrast will tend to look okay, especially if you avoid picking colors which are outrageously colorful. On the other hand, categorically, any color scheme you choose which does not have enough lightness contrast will look bad (will look muddy or clashing, text will be illegible, etc.).
Any color guide which doesn’t start with a discussion of lightness contrast is in my opinion doing a disservice to its readers.
Unfortunately, the “L” in HSL and the “V” in HSV are not remotely close to real measures of perceived lightness (value). You need to go to a different color model. The most established choice is CIELAB, from the mid-1970s, supported in a wide variety of software.
Re: Practical Color Theory for People Who Code
#10Do you guys know of any solid guides on how to use and mix and match colors in photography and video making to evoke certain specific emotions? It's easy to find materials on entry level color theory "here are complementary colors, here is a triad etc" but I haven't been able to find a good resource on how to use those coloring choices to influence viewer reactions. Seems like something everybody in the visual arts e…
Psychophysics is the scientific area of study for this. But much of it is learned, and is effected by culture, generation, location. It's quite complex.