Held: Tuesday, 16 September 2014

Back to Outline 10 - Testing Your Procedures. On to Outline 12 - Raster Graphics and RGB Colors.

Summary

We consider the basics of color theory.

Related Pages

• Reading: Design and Color
• Web resource: A color wheel
• Web resource: A color cylinder
• Web resource: The Color Scheme Designer
• EBoard (Source) (HTML)

Overview

• A bit about design.
• A bit about color theory.
• Exploring some images and design spaces.

Administrivia

• No lab partners today. Sit wherever you want.
• Because of recent problems, we will probably spend very little time on the official topic of today (design and color). We will instead spend time talking about quiz 2, homework 3, and testing.
• HW 2 will be returned tonight.

Upcoming Work

• No lab writeup.
• HW 3 due tonight.
• Exam 1 to be distributed tomorrow.
• Readings for Wednesday:
  • Raster Graphics
  • RGB Colors

Campus Events of Interest

• Rosenfield seminar on Scotland, Tuesday noon and Thursday afternoon.
• Rebecca Hamlin book talk Wednesday at 4:15 pm.
• Internship talks Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.

Extra Credit Opportunities

Academic

• Convocation Wednesday: President Kington
• CS Table Friday: Browser Tracking

Peer Support

• Football Games (???)
• Women's Volleyball (???)
  • Congrats on three victories this weekend!
• Men's Tennis (???)
• Women's Tennis (???)
• Anna Christie, Oct. 9-12 (SB plays Marthy)

The chief aim of color should be to serve expression as well as possible. Henri Matisse

A Bit About Design

• Many issues to consider, both formal and informal
• Formal attributes include things like balance, symmetry, dimensionality
• Informal goals
  • How does the image lead your eye?
  • Does the image maintain your viewer's interest, or is it easy to see and dismiss.
• Successful designers know how to take advantage of certain formal attributes to acheive various goals (including these informal goals).
• Right now, we're just going to look at some formal issues regarding color.

Basics of Color Theory

• Issue: Do we think in terms of paint (traditional) or in terms of light (computer/theatre)?
• Three models
  • RGB - additive color, based on red, green, and blue lights
    • Adding colors makes things brighter - more light is transmitted
    • Often represented using a 0-255 (integer) or 0-1 (real) range.
  • Red, Yellow, Blue - subtractive color
    • Adding colors makes things darker - more light is absorbed
  • Hue, Saturation, Value
    • Hue is the underlying color
    • Value refers to lightness and darkness (high value is lighter)
    • Saturation refers to how much of the color we have (low saturation is closer to grey, high saturation is purer color)
    • We'll look at the color wheel to ground this understanding
      • A color wheel
      • A color cylinder
      • And we will play with some issues in lab tomorrow
• Working with RYB and the color wheel, we say that there are
  • Three primary colors: Red, Yellow, and Blue
  • Three secondary colors, created by combining the primaries.
  • Six tertiary colors, created by mixing a secondary with the neighboring primaries.
• We also assign temperature to colors: red colors are warmer, blue and green are cooloer
  • Temperature can also affect where in the plane you see something
• The ways you arrange colors affect the way you understand them.
  • Traditionally, there are ranges between harmonious and dischordant.
• Color schemes
  • Complementary - opposite on the color wheel
  • Analagous - three neighboring colors on the 12-color color wheel
  • Monochromatic - variations on one color (different hue/saturation)
  • We may take a quick look at the Color Scheme Designer

Activities

• A few check-ins about HSV.
• Some sample designs, taken from the Kluber version of Digital Design
• Maybe more fun with the Color Scheme Designer