Conquering colour

Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue - I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too. Knowing the colours of the rainbow is not enough anymore. 

Colour can be cryptic – when designers use terms such as CMYK, RGB, and PMS – it can become confusing. RED-i Design has put together a list of 20 colour terms, and their definitions, to help you conquer colour and be in the know.

Term One: Brightness

Brightness is the effect or sensation by means of which an observer is able to distinguish differences in luminance. Brightness is also the dimension of a colour that represents its similarity to one of a series of achromatic colours ranging from very dim (dark) to very bright (dazzling).

Term Two: CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black)

CMYK is a colour model in which all colours are described as a mixture of these four process colours. CMYK is the standard colour model used in offset printing for full-colour documents. Because such printing uses inks of these four basic colours, it is often called four-colour printing.

Term Three: Colour balance

Colour balance is achieved when a colour-recording device (like a camera) renders an image close to how the human eye perceives it.

Term Four: Colour cast

Colour cast is an overall bias of the image towards one colour. It is often when unwanted colour affects an image. 

Term Five: Colour correct

Colour correction involves altering the colours in an image in order to print or display it properly, or for special effects.

Term Six: Colour curves

Colour curves is a mechanism for controlling colour changes, and matching colours. Colour curves are set by user-adjustable lookup tables that define a colour transform, which may be applied to each primary additive colour in the image.

Term Seven: Colour gamut

Colour gamut is the entire range of colours available on a particular device such as a monitor or printer. A monitor, which displays RGB signals, typically has a greater colour gamut than a printer, which uses CMYK inks.

Term Eight: Grey scale

Grey scale is a range of shades of grey without apparent colour. The darkest possible shade is black, which is the total absence of transmitted or reflected light. The lightest possible shade is white, the total transmission or reflection of light at all visible wavelengths.

Term Nine: Hue

Hue is the property of colours by which they can be perceived as ranging from red through yellow, green, and blue, as determined by the dominant wavelength of the light. It is a particular gradation of colour; a shade or tint.

Term Ten: PMS (Pantone Matching System)

PMS is a popular colour matching system used by the printing industry to print spot colours. Most applications that support colour printing allow you to specify colours by indicating the Pantone name or number. This assures that you get the right colour when the file is printed, even though the colour may not look right when displayed on your monitor.

Term Eleven: Primary colours

The primary colours are red, yellow, and blue. These colours mix to create secondary colours. 

Term Twelve: Registration

Registration is the name of the colour that is made up of all colours to make a very dense black. 

Term Thirteen: RGB (Red-Green-Blue)

Display devices generally use the colour model, RGB. One of the most difficult aspects of desktop publishing in colour is colour matching -- properly converting the RGB colours into CMYK colours so that what gets printed looks the same as what appears on the monitor.

Term Fourteen: Saturation 

In graphics and imaging, colour saturation is used to describe the intensity of colour in the image. A saturated image has overly bright colours. Using a graphics editing program you can increase saturation on under-exposed images, or visa versa.

Term Fifteen: Secondary colours

The secondary colours created by mixing the primary colours are orange, green, and purple. 

Term Sixteen: Shade

A specific colour when mixed with black is referred to as a shade of that colour. 

Term Seventeen: Spectrum

Colours of the rainbow arranged in their natural order. Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Violet-Indigo. 

Term Eighteen: Tertiary colours

Hues created when primary and secondary colours are mixed.  

Term Nineteen: Tint

A specific colour when mixed with white is referred to as a tint of that colour.

Term Twenty: Black and white

Black refers to the production or reflection of comparatively little light, and having no predominant hue. White is the achromatic colour of maximum lightness; the colour of objects that reflect nearly all light of all visible wavelengths; the complement or antagonist of black, the other extreme of the neutral grey series. Although typically a response to maximum stimulation of the retina, the perception of white appears always to depend on contrast.

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