The Cool House: Hues, Tints and Shades

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Hues, Tints and Shades


I've been pondering the difficulty in defining a color, an issue I illustrated while trending pink and chartreuse.

There is, of course, the dictionary definition:
   "color refers to the wavelength composition of light, shade is a gradation of color referring to its degree of darkness, tint is a gradation referring to its degree of lightness, and hue indicates a modification of a basic color... hue is the quality of a color that makes it possible to call it bluish green, etc. (the color of a color); shade is a color variation having to do with the value of a hue (lightness or darkness), and tint is a pale variation of a color". 
But that lacks the necessary visual clarity.

Now, thanks to a link from VSL, you can take the Munsell Hue Test and arrange colors in hue order to determine your color I.Q.
I scored 33, which while not bad is far from perfect. You?

2 comments:

Ethan@OPC said...

On a bit of a tangent.... Adobe has a site / tool called Kuler. People put together interesting color palettes and you can explore color. Just thought it might be something you'd enjoy.

modernemama said...

Thanks Ethan, I just wasted a very happy hour uploading photos and exploring colour palettes