The expression of COLOR

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Fredy Gallón - Supply Chain Manager

Color has always been present in the history of the universe and the human being has evolved in the way to reproduce it and communicate through it. Today we can reproduce color in digital media in a way more faithful to reality, we have high resolution image capture equipment (cameras) capable of achieving very high definitions, also with digital equipment (screens) that can faithfully reproduce the captured images, the biggest challenges are found when we want to bring these digital images to a physical medium, whether a photograph, a package, a garment, etc., for this we need to have an ecosystem with several elements interacting organically and systemically: Printing technologies (analog and digital), raw materials and supplies, pre-conversion, conversion and post conversion processes, qualified people and systems that allow to reproduce it in a controlled and repetitive way, each of these is in itself a world, full of resources and variables and with high developments that together achieve a high reproduction of the captured color.

We will develop in several articles some elements and concepts about color.

https://www.fotonostra.com/grafico/historiacolor.htm

History of color

Color has existed since the origin of the universe, but people have not always thought and expressed the same opinion about it, about its origin or its composition. By history of color we refer to the evolution of the concept and definition of color throughout history..

Color produces sensations, feelings and emotions. It induces different moods, transmits messages, expresses values, situations... and yet it does not exist beyond our visual perception.

Color has been studied by scientists, physicists, philosophers and artists. Each one in his own field reached different conclusions that, sometimes, were good starting points for further studies and for everything we know about color today.

We have been expressing ourselves through color for at least 35,000 years. Our ancestors used make-up and decorated their caves. In cave paintings, only a few colors were used: reds, ochers and blacks, which were obtained from charcoal and some minerals, mixed with animal fat or vegetable resins. How beautiful, how pretty and how cool the cave was! Nobody asked questions, what for?

Early theories on color

Then came the philosophers. Aristotle  said that all colors are formed with the mixture of four basic ones. They were the colors of earth, fire, water and sky, that is, the chemical elements of antiquity. He also gave a fundamental role to the incidence of light on objects.

In the Renaissance, Leonardo Da Vinci defined color as something proper to matter. He made the following scale of basic colors: first white as the main one, since it allows to receive all the other colors; then yellow for earth, green water, blue sky and red fire. Finally, black for darkness, since it is the color that deprives us of seeing them all.

With the mixture of these colors he obtained all the others, although he also observed that green could arise from a mixture. He speaks for the first time in history of primary and secondary colors.

The English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton took a decisive step in the history of color and established a principle that is still accepted today: LIGHT IS COLOR. In 1665 Newton discovered that sunlight, passing through a prism, is divided into various colors. He discovered the decomposition of light into the colors of the chromatic spectrum. These colors are sky blue, green, yellow, orange red and purple red. 

We can observe this phenomenon when light refracts on the edge of a glass or plastic. Also when it rains and some rays of sunlight pass through the clouds, the water droplets perform the same function as the prism and break up the light producing what we call rainbows.

He observed that natural light is formed by light of six colors, when it strikes an object, it absorbs some colors and reflects others. With this observation gave rise to the following principle: all opaque bodies when illuminated reflect all or part of the components of the light they receive.

When we see a red object, we are actually looking at the surface of a material that contains a pigment; this pigment has the ability to absorb all the waves that form white light, except red, the red is the wave that the object reflects; our eyes pick it up and send it to the brain, which decodes it and says that it is red.

Color theory: What is color?

We cannot fully understand colors without understanding what light is and how it works. This is where Color Theory helps us.

Color is an attribute that we perceive of objects when there is light. The whole world around us is colorful as long as it is illuminated.

Color Theory is a set of knowledge and rules that allow the handling of colors, whether light or pigments, to achieve the desired effect.

Light is made up of electromagnetic waves that propagate at about 300,000 km per second. Although light travels in a straight line, it propagates in the form of waves. This is known as the wave character of light. el carácter ondulatorio de la luz.

Each of these waves has a different length, i.e. the waves are closer together or farther apart. This is what produces the different types of light, such as infrared light, ultraviolet light or the visible spectrum

The visible spectrum is the one in which the wavelength is between 380 and 770 nanometers, since the human eye is only capable of perceiving these wavelengths.

One of the properties of light is that the surfaces of objects return or bounce back the light rays they do not absorb into their surroundings. Our brain interprets these electromagnetic radiations that objects reflect as what we call color. color.

he perception of shape, depth or texture of objects is closely linked to the perception of the colors they reflect.

The rainbow. Or was it rain-bow?

The rainbow has all the colors of the solar spectrum. We can see them because the water droplets act as a prism and break the light rays into waves allowing us to see the colors. This theory was demonstrated by Isaac Newton who, despite breaking down light, never understood why.

White light can be produced by conveniently mixing red, green and blue lights. If we do the same with pigments, we will get brown. And if we combine yellow, cyan and magenta pigments we will get black. But if we do the same with lights we will have... a club?

Color properties

In Color Theory, properties are those attributes that change and make each color unique. There are three: hue, saturation and brightness. el tono, la saturación y el brillo.

•» Hue is also known as shade, tint, chroma or by its English name, Hue. It is the property that differentiates one color from another and by which we designate the names of colors: green, violet, red, etc.

It refers to the path that a color makes in the chromatic circle acquiring shades, such as orange red or greenish yellow.

In spectral colors, which are those of the rainbow, hue is directly related to wavelength. The shortest wavelength we perceive corresponds to red and the longest to violet. On the other hand, nonspectral colors, such as browns, ochers, purples or purples, do not correspond to wavelengths and are obtained only by mixing spectral colors.

•» Saturation represents the chromatic intensity or purity of a color. In other words, it is the lightness or darkness of a color and is determined by the amount of light (or white mixture) a color has.

The saturation of colors changes as that color has more or less gray. The greater the amount of gray, the paler and less saturation; the lesser the mixture of gray, the more intense and more saturation.

•» Luminosity is the amount of light reflected by a surface compared to that reflected by a white surface under the same lighting conditions. More luminosity makes it closer to white, less to black.

In color theory, lightness refers to how dark or light a color is. The higher the luminosity of a color, the lighter it will reflect.

How the colors of objects are perceived

We are able to see colors because of two of the properties of light. Absorption and reflection.

An opaque body, i.e. not transparent, absorbs a large part of the light that illuminates it and reflects a more or less small part. When this body absorbs all the colors contained in white light, the object appears black.

When it reflects all the colors of the spectrum, the object appears white. The absorbed colors disappear inside the object, the reflected ones reach the human eye. The colors that we visualize are, therefore, those that the objects themselves do not absorb, but propagate.

Absorption and reflection

All bodies are made up of substances that absorb and reflect electromagnetic waves, i.e. they absorb and reflect colors.

All bodies are made up of substances that absorb and reflect electromagnetic waves, i.e. they absorb and reflect colors.

If the object looks black, it is because it absorbs all electromagnetic radiation (all colors) and reflects none.

The red of a body

The tomato appears red to us because the eye only receives the red light reflected by the vegetable, absorbs the green and blue and reflects only the red. A yellow banana absorbs the blue color and reflects the red and green colors, which together allow us to visualize the yellow color.

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