What do hue, chroma, saturation, value, tint, tone, and shade mean in color theory?

Asked 8/11/2011

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I’m trying to understand common color-theory terms as they apply to photography and editing. I roughly understand hue as the basic color family, but I’m confused about how the other terms relate to each other, especially when working with digital images.

Can someone clearly explain these terms and how they differ:

  • hue
  • chroma
  • saturation
  • value
  • tint
  • tone
  • shade
  • intensity
  • brightness
  • lightness

A simple explanation in the context of photography or image editing would be very helpful.

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

15y ago

2 Answers

32

Don't feel bad. Color theory isn't easy.

First, many of your terms come from the many different ways to express a color. What we typically call a "color" (like, 'red' or 'orange') can be expressed in a variety of different ways:

  1. RGB: The combination of red, green, and blue light that forms a color. This is also called additive color (when you add more light, you get closer to white) and is what you'll see for digital cameras, televisions, monitors, and anything that emits light in general instead of needing an external light source to illuminate it.
  2. CMYK: The combination of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and black ink or paint that will reflect a certain color. This is also called subtractive color (when you add more ink, you get closer to black) and is what you'll see for printers or anything else that uses ink, pigments, or paint. Theoretically Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow components would be enough to make all colors, but it's cheaper and faster to use dedicated black ink for dark colors and shades of gray.
  3. HSL: A way to express a color in terms of its:

    • Hue: is it red or blue or anything in between? If you consider spectrum of visible light, hue determines on which point of the spectrum the color roughly is.
    • Saturation: Is the color purely, say, red, or is it muted down with some combination of gray? Totally saturated is red, totally unsaturated is gray (or white or black, depending on the…)
    • Lightness: Is it closer to white, or closer to black?

    You can play with an HSL color picker at MothereffingHSL.

    In Photoshop and elsewhere you'll see HSB (for Brightness which is in practice the same as HSV for Value) and HSI, which are both similar but not identical to HSL. More on those differences in this Wikipedia article.

  4. Lab: This is a way to plot a color based on its Lightness, amount of green or magenta (a), and amount of blue or yellow (b), a model that closely approximates human vision. With Lab, you can plot every single color that's possible in RGB and CMYK, so it's useful as an intermediate step in converting digital graphics for print.

Now, after you've got your color nailed down, your other terms:

  • Tint: for a given color, make it lighter (basically, add pure white) and you'll have a tint of that original color.
  • Shade: for a given color, make it darker (basically, add pure black) and you'll have a shade of that original color.
  • Tones: I see "tones" used to describe ranges of discrete brightness/lightness/luminescence levels in images. You'll also see it used to describe combination of colors. Mariam-Webster gives the example of "gray walls of a greenish tone".
  • Chroma: Generally this is another term for saturation or a combination of saturation and hue. The Wikipedia article on colorfulness groups chroma, saturation, and colorfulness together as loosely similar, but chroma does have a specific definition in some color spaces.
  • Intensity: Could refer to the brightness of a color or the saturation (or a combination). Like a soda can could be described as intensely red, or a white point of light would be intensely bright. One quirk of human vision is the Helmholtz–Kohlrausch effect, which describes how we perceive highly saturated colors as appearing lighter

Originally by user6268. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user6268

15y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

These terms overlap, and different color models use them a bit differently.

  • hue: the basic color family, such as red, green, or blue.
  • saturation / chroma: how pure or vivid a color is. Higher saturation/chroma means less gray or white mixed in.
  • value: in models like HSV, this refers to brightness/luminance.
  • brightness / lightness: general terms for how light or dark something appears; usage varies by model.
  • tint: a hue made lighter, often thought of as adding white.
  • shade: a hue made darker, often thought of as adding black.
  • tone: often a less pure or altered version of a hue, commonly by changing its brightness or mixing in gray.
  • intensity: often used loosely as another word for saturation or strength of color.

In photography, it helps to think of color as having three main qualities: hue (what color it is), brightness/value (how light or dark it is), and saturation/chroma (how vivid or muted it is).

Also note that digital imaging may describe color in RGB, while printing uses CMYK, and other systems such as HSV/HSL or Munsell use different terms for similar ideas.

UniqueBot

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15y ago

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