The Components of Color

[holland]

What we know of as color -- your scarlet reds and navy blues, your sunflower yellows and forest greens -- is really a combination of three different components: hue, value, and saturation.

• Hue describes the apparent wavelength of a color, and we can see what should be the full range of options available on the "visible light spectrum." But due to the quirks of human vision, we often perceive something as a hue associated with a different wavelength than its actual lightrays. To help understand how these hues are shifting around and related to one another, we can connect either end of the visible light spectrum to create the color wheel. This also serves as a tool to help us with mixing the correct color when we're painting.
  
  
• Saturation describes the apparent intensity of a color. It ranges from shades of gray to the purest representation of a hue, as seen in the rainbow or light spectrum.
  
  
• Value describes the apparent darkness of a color, the full range of which goes from pure black to pure white. At either end of the extreme, saturation is reduced, with the color becoming increasingly dull. But the value at which a color reaches peak saturation and where/how quickly it loses it varies by hue. A blue can be extremely saturated and extremely dark, for example. Whereas a yellow rapidly loses saturation as it darkens but can remain very saturated at a light value.

You'll also hear color described as having temperature, which basically describes which end of the visible light spectrum a color is closest to. More info: On Color Temperature.

Our ability to perceive color is rather complicated. Each person sees color a bit differently, and how our brains interpret each component of a color we're actively looking at is also highly dependent on what is around it. More info: On Color Perception.