Primary Colors
Of all the colors in the visible spectrum, three colors are special in that all other colors in the spectrum can be created from different mixtures of these three. These are the three primary colors. For our purposes here, the primary colors are red, green, and blue on the visible electromagnetic spectrum above. But many of us learn from early childhood that the primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. The difference arises from the source of the light we perceive. If the source emits light at a specific wavelength in the visible range, then it represents an additive color system. If the source reflects light at a specific wavelength in the visible spectrum, then it represents a subtractive color system.
The two are further distinguished as follows:
Additive color systems are producers of light, like television or computer screens. If you’ve ever washed such a screen you might have notice that water on the screen has a magnifying effect, in that you will be able to distinctly see that the screen is made up of tiny red, blue, and green ‘dots.’ These dots are the color building blocks for an additive color system, with all other colors represented by some mixture of these three, and white being what you get when all three are used in equal amounts. These are more important for this article, the types of color systems you will be dealing with in web design.
Subtractive color systems, on the other hand, are materials or substances that actively reflect ambient light to produce various colors. These systems do not produce any light on their own, but instead are dependent on the way materials reflect surrounding light sources to determine the color we see with our eyes. If you mix the three primary colors together equally in a subtractive color system (for example, equal amounts of red, blue, and yellow paints), you will get something closer to black than to the white you get by equal mixing of the primary colors of additive sources.
Secondary & Tertiary Colors
Mixing two adjacent primary colors creates secondary colors. In our additive color system, if you mix red and green you will get yellow. Mixing red and blue will yield magenta, and mixing blue and green will give you a cyan color (kind of a light blue). Tertiary colors lie in between the primary and secondary colors, and it is here where you can see the importance of the word ‘adjacent’.
The Color Wheel
A very useful way to display the relationships between primary, secondary, and tertiary colors is by displaying the colors on a color wheel.
Sir Isaac Newton was the first to present colors in a circular diagram, or color wheel, in 1666. It is often the first step in any presentation of color theory, since it is very useful at demonstrating the relationships between different colors as they are created from the primary colors.
As more and more colors are added to the wheel by mixing the colors already on it, the net effect is a representation of the visible spectrum that turns back on itself, so that the violet and red ends join together.
The idea is to start with a wheel representing only the three primary colors—red, blue, and green for our additive color system. Allow a little mixing at the boundaries and you get the secondary colors and new boundaries. Allow further mixing at the boundaries of secondary colors, and you have the tertiary colors, and so on.
Color Terminology
There are a few terms that crop up often in color theory: hue, value, saturation, tint, and shade.
These are defined as follows:
Hue – Hue is kind of synonymous with ‘color’ itself. Different hues correspond to specific portions within the visible spectrum, so that hue may be defined generally as the spectral color name. The specific hues that we refer to are Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet as described above.
Value – Value is a measurement of the light and dark properties of color, and all colors are associated with specific values. The hues have a ‘natural’ value for which they look the purest. Some colors are naturally light, like yellow, and some are naturally dark, like indigo or violet. An interesting characteristic of value is that it can exist without hue, as in black, white, and gray.
Saturation – Saturation is a measure of a color’s intensity. It is often the most difficult color term to understand, since it is often confused with value. One way to look at it is that saturation is not so much about light and dark, but more about paleness and brightness. A saturated color is high in intensity, or very bright. An unsaturated color is low in intensity, or very dull.
Tint and Shade – Tint and shade describe how a color varies from its original hue through a change in value. For example, if we add white to a given color, the lighter version is called a tint of that color. If we had black, the darker version is called a shade of that color.
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