Hence its effectiveness in traffic lights the world over. Its effect is physical; it stimulates us and raises the pulse rate, giving the impression that time is passing faster than it is. It relates to the masculine principle and can activate the "fight or flight" instinct. Red is strong, and very basic. Pure red is the simplest colour, with no subtlety. It is stimulating and lively, very friendly. At the same time, it can be perceived as demanding and aggressive. Intelligence, communication, trust, efficiency, serenity, duty, logic, coolness, reflection, calm.
Coldness, aloofness, lack of emotion, unfriendliness. Blue is the colour of the mind and is essentially soothing; it affects us mentally, rather than the physical reaction we have to red. Strong blues will stimulate clear thought and lighter, soft blues will calm the mind and aid concentration. Consequently it is serene and mentally calming. It is the colour of clear communication. Blue objects do not appear to be as close to us as red ones.
Orange Color Names
Time and again in research, blue is the world's favourite colour. However, it can be perceived as cold, unemotional and unfriendly. Optimism, confidence, self-esteem, extraversion, emotional strength, friendliness, creativity. Irrationality, fear, emotional fragility, depression, anxiety, suicide. The yellow wavelength is relatively long and essentially stimulating.
In this case the stimulus is emotional, therefore yellow is the strongest colour, psychologically. The right yellow will lift our spirits and our self-esteem; it is the colour of confidence and optimism. Too much of it, or the wrong tone in relation to the other tones in a colour scheme, can cause self-esteem to plummet, giving rise to fear and anxiety. Our "yellow streak" can surface. Harmony, balance, refreshment, universal love, rest, restoration, reassurance, environmental awareness, equilibrium, peace.
Boredom, stagnation, blandness, enervation. Green strikes the eye in such a way as to require no adjustment whatever and is, therefore, restful. Being in the centre of the spectrum, it is the colour of balance - a more important concept than many people realise. When the world about us contains plenty of green, this indicates the presence of water, and little danger of famine, so we are reassured by green, on a primitive level. Negatively, it can indicate stagnation and, incorrectly used, will be perceived as being too bland.
Spiritual awareness, containment, vision, luxury, authenticity, truth, quality.
Introversion, decadence, suppression, inferiority. Furthermore, the rods are barely sensitive to light in the "red" range. In certain conditions of intermediate illumination, the rod response and a weak cone response can together result in color discriminations not accounted for by cone responses alone.
Red Color Names
These effects, combined, are summarized also in the Kruithof curve , that describes the change of color perception and pleasingness of light as function of temperature and intensity. While the mechanisms of color vision at the level of the retina are well-described in terms of tristimulus values, color processing after that point is organized differently. A dominant theory of color vision proposes that color information is transmitted out of the eye by three opponent processes , or opponent channels, each constructed from the raw output of the cones: This theory has been supported by neurobiology, and accounts for the structure of our subjective color experience.
Specifically, it explains why humans cannot perceive a "reddish green" or "yellowish blue", and it predicts the color wheel: The exact nature of color perception beyond the processing already described, and indeed the status of color as a feature of the perceived world or rather as a feature of our perception of the world — a type of qualia — is a matter of complex and continuing philosophical dispute.
Color wheel - Wikipedia
If one or more types of a person's color-sensing cones are missing or less responsive than normal to incoming light, that person can distinguish fewer colors and is said to be color deficient or color blind though this latter term can be misleading; almost all color deficient individuals can distinguish at least some colors.
Some kinds of color deficiency are caused by anomalies in the number or nature of cones in the retina. Others like central or cortical achromatopsia are caused by neural anomalies in those parts of the brain where visual processing takes place. While most humans are trichromatic having three types of color receptors , many animals, known as tetrachromats , have four types.
These include some species of spiders , most marsupials , birds , reptiles , and many species of fish. Other species are sensitive to only two axes of color or do not perceive color at all; these are called dichromats and monochromats respectively. A distinction is made between retinal tetrachromacy having four pigments in cone cells in the retina, compared to three in trichromats and functional tetrachromacy having the ability to make enhanced color discriminations based on that retinal difference. As many as half of all women are retinal tetrachromats.
Behavioral and functional neuroimaging experiments have demonstrated that these color experiences lead to changes in behavioral tasks and lead to increased activation of brain regions involved in color perception, thus demonstrating their reality, and similarity to real color percepts, albeit evoked through a non-standard route. After exposure to strong light in their sensitivity range, photoreceptors of a given type become desensitized.
For a few seconds after the light ceases, they will continue to signal less strongly than they otherwise would. Colors observed during that period will appear to lack the color component detected by the desensitized photoreceptors. This effect is responsible for the phenomenon of afterimages , in which the eye may continue to see a bright figure after looking away from it, but in a complementary color. Afterimage effects have also been utilized by artists, including Vincent van Gogh. When an artist uses a limited color palette , the eye tends to compensate by seeing any gray or neutral color as the color which is missing from the color wheel.
For example, in a limited palette consisting of red, yellow, black, and white, a mixture of yellow and black will appear as a variety of green, a mixture of red and black will appear as a variety of purple, and pure gray will appear bluish. The trichromatic theory is strictly true when the visual system is in a fixed state of adaptation. In reality, the visual system is constantly adapting to changes in the environment and compares the various colors in a scene to reduce the effects of the illumination. If a scene is illuminated with one light, and then with another, as long as the difference between the light sources stays within a reasonable range, the colors in the scene appear relatively constant to us.
This was studied by Edwin Land in the s and led to his retinex theory of color constancy. Both phenomena are readily explained and mathematically modeled with modern theories of chromatic adaptation and color appearance e. Colors vary in several different ways, including hue shades of red , orange , yellow , green , blue , and violet , saturation , brightness , and gloss. Some color words are derived from the name of an object of that color, such as " orange " or " salmon ", while others are abstract, like "red".
In the study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution , Brent Berlin and Paul Kay describe a pattern in naming "basic" colors like "red" but not "red-orange" or "dark red" or "blood red", which are "shades" of red. The next colors to be distinguished are usually red and then yellow or green. All languages with six "basic" colors include black, white, red, green, blue, and yellow. The pattern holds up to a set of twelve: Individual colors have a variety of cultural associations such as national colors in general described in individual color articles and color symbolism.
List of Colors with Color Names
The field of color psychology attempts to identify the effects of color on human emotion and activity. Chromotherapy is a form of alternative medicine attributed to various Eastern traditions. Colors have different associations in different countries and cultures. Different colors have been demonstrated to have effects on cognition.
For example, researchers at the University of Linz in Austria demonstrated that the color red significantly decreases cognitive functioning in men. Most light sources are mixtures of various wavelengths of light. Many such sources can still effectively produce a spectral color, as the eye cannot distinguish them from single-wavelength sources. For example, most computer displays reproduce the spectral color orange as a combination of red and green light; it appears orange because the red and green are mixed in the right proportions to allow the eye's cones to respond the way they do to the spectral color orange.
A useful concept in understanding the perceived color of a non-monochromatic light source is the dominant wavelength , which identifies the single wavelength of light that produces a sensation most similar to the light source. Dominant wavelength is roughly akin to hue. There are many color perceptions that by definition cannot be pure spectral colors due to desaturation or because they are purples mixtures of red and violet light, from opposite ends of the spectrum.
Some examples of necessarily non-spectral colors are the achromatic colors black, gray, and white and colors such as pink , tan , and magenta. Two different light spectra that have the same effect on the three color receptors in the human eye will be perceived as the same color. They are metamers of that color. This is exemplified by the white light emitted by fluorescent lamps, which typically has a spectrum of a few narrow bands, while daylight has a continuous spectrum.
The human eye cannot tell the difference between such light spectra just by looking into the light source, although reflected colors from objects can look different. This is often exploited; for example, to make fruit or tomatoes look more intensely red. Similarly, most human color perceptions can be generated by a mixture of three colors called primaries. This is used to reproduce color scenes in photography, printing, television, and other media. There are a number of methods or color spaces for specifying a color in terms of three particular primary colors.
Each method has its advantages and disadvantages depending on the particular application.
No mixture of colors, however, can produce a response truly identical to that of a spectral color, although one can get close, especially for the longer wavelengths, where the CIE color space chromaticity diagram has a nearly straight edge. Because of this, and because the primaries in color printing systems generally are not pure themselves, the colors reproduced are never perfectly saturated spectral colors, and so spectral colors cannot be matched exactly. However, natural scenes rarely contain fully saturated colors, thus such scenes can usually be approximated well by these systems.
The range of colors that can be reproduced with a given color reproduction system is called the gamut. The CIE chromaticity diagram can be used to describe the gamut. Another problem with color reproduction systems is connected with the acquisition devices, like cameras or scanners. Comments from color pros: A basic understanding of how colors are created is the first step in providing correct answers. Here are two examples:. The color of a tangible object is the result of pigments or molecular coloring agents.
For example, the color of a red apple in the illustration at the left is the result of molecular coloring agents on the surface of the apple. Also, a painting of a red apple is the result of red pigments used to create the image. The colors of objects viewed on a television set or on a computer monitor are the result of colored light in the illustration at the right.
If you're not familiar with how colors are created by light, look at your monitor or television screen close up. Put your eye right up against the screen. A small magnifying glass might help. This is what you will see:.
A simplified way to explain it is that the color of a red apple on a computer or television is created by photons of red light that are transmitted within the electronic system. It's also important to understand the concept of "primary" colors. The fundamental rule is that there are three colors that cannot be made by mixing other colors together.
These three, red, blue, and yellow, are known as the primary colors. Now that we've described two different categories of colors pigment and light-generated and have a definition of primary colors, the answer to whether black and white are colors can be answered. Are black and white colors when generated as light? Black and white cats generated on a television. These colors are created by light. Black is the absence of color and is therefore not a color. When there is no light, everything is black.
Test this out by going into a photographic dark room. There are no photons of light. In other words, there are no photons of colors. Light appears colorless or white. Sunlight is white light that is composed of all the colors of the spectrum. A rainbow is proof. You can't see the colors of sunlight except when atmospheric conditions bend the light rays and create a rainbow.
You can also use a prism to demonstrate this. That's the symbolism of the color that some say isn't a color.