Each color has its own appearance based on three key attributes – hue, chroma (saturation), and value (lightness). When you’re describing a color, it’s important to use all three of these attributes to accurately identify the color and distinguish it from others. What is hue? Hue is defined as how most of us perceive and name a color – using the colors of the rainbow (red, orange, green, blue, etc.). Reference the color wheel, below, to see how colors shift from one...
Posted August 15, 2019 by X-Rite Color
Like geographic coordinates – longitude, latitude, and altitude – L*a*b* color values give us a way to locate and communicate colors. What’s the history of L*a*b*? In the 1940’s, Richard Hunter introduced a tri-stimulus model, Lab, which is scaled to achieve near uniform spacing of perceived color differences. While Hunter’s Lab was adopted as the de facto model for plotting absolute color coordinates and differences between colors, it was never formally accepted as...
Posted October 08, 2018 by Tim Mouw
To control color, you need to be able to compare very small differences, determine their impact, and understand how to address that impact. But words alone can’t give us enough information to precisely describe colors, or the difference between them. In this three-part series we will look at the color science behind tolerancing – the color analysis that paved the way, the role of light, and the difference between a color space and a color model – so you can make ...
Posted February 21, 2018 by Tim Mouw
