In reading or hearing about color, you may hear the term "chroma" and wonder, what exactly, does chroma mean? It sounds kind of like chrome. Is it related? Something shiny?
A simple explanation is that chroma=intensity, or how bright the color appears. Not bright as in "shiny", like chrome, but bright as in very highly pigmented, very highly concentrated color. In painter's terms, "straight out of the tube".
Another term you may see for this is "saturation", which is used often in filmmaking - more saturated (bright) colors have a higher chroma, and less saturated (muted) colors a lower chroma.
The three characteristics of color are: hue (what color it is), value (lightness/darkness), and chroma (intensity).
For example, the predominant color in my sketchbook drawing below is pink (hue), medium value (value is measured either on a 1-10 scale where 1 is equal to black and 10 is equal to white. I'd give this a 5 or 6) and a high chroma. It's a very intense color.
So the highest chroma is dazzling, intense color. As the color gets more muted, the chroma becomes lower, until the lowest chroma is just grey. And how light or dark the grey would be depends on the value of the original color.
Note that these three attributes - hue, value, and chroma - are all separate; you can have an intense light pink or an intense dark pink, a dull light pink or a dull dark pink, an intense dark blue, a dull medium purple, etc.
To read more about color and its practical applications:
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Image credits (top) https://www.pexels.com/photo/color-shade-samples-276267/
second image is my much less professional photograph
It's always interesting to read about some new aspect of art, especially someone like me, with no formal training
ReplyDeleteThanks! I try to explain things in plain language. Once you know the terms, it's pretty easy to see how everything relates!
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