Color – Color Basics
via Wellesley What is Color? Color is a perceptual experience ENCODED BY THE BRAIN; colors can be imagined in the absence of visual stimuli, although we know relatively little about the mechanisms underlying these "memory" colors. We know more about how color is elicited in response to the relative activation of light-sensitive photoreceptors in the eye. Color is related to the PHYSICAL SPECTRUM; but that is not the end of the story. Color can be described in terms of Hue, which refers to the pure spectral color—generally red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet—value (or luminance, also referred to as brightness), which refers to intensity—the degree of darkness or lightness—and saturation—a fully saturated color contains no white. The value...