Color Space Series - Munsell's Color System

Munsell's color system (Munsell color theory)

Albert Henry Munsell, an American painter and color educator, arranged colors according to the three attributes of color: hue, value, and chroma.

He established the color system by publishing 'The Munsell Book of color' in 1927, and in 1940, Munsell's color system was revised by the Optical Society of America (OAS) as 'Munsell renotation' due to the irregularity of the sensory scale.

Characteristics of Munsell's color system

• Constructed a sensory color system based on perceptual information
• Assigned different values to red, yellow, green, blue, and purple, and assigned the highest chroma colors to different values according to human visual brightness

Three attributes of Munsell's color system

Hue

• The type of color
• The colors at the end of the long and short wavelengths of the spectrum
• Based on five colors: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple
• Inserted colors such as turquoise, blue-green, and purple between them to make 10 colors
• Divided them into 10 parts to make 100 colors

Value

• The brightness of the color
• Can be adjusted in 11 steps from 0 to 10, but 0 and 10 are pure black and white
• Adjusted in 9 steps in practice
• The value axis is called the gray scale.

Chroma

• The degree of purity of the color, or how clear or dull it is
• Adjusted in 16 steps

Units of Munsell's color system

• H: R,Y,G,B,P of 1~10
• V: 1~10
• C: 1~16
• For example, it is expressed as "H V/C: 5R 10/16".

Representative Color Spaces

RGB (Red Green Blue)

• The basic principle of web color representation
• Represents colors by mixing colors in an additive mixing method that increases the value

CMYK color space

• The four colors are cyan (Cyan), magenta (Magenta), yellow (Yellow), and black (Black).
• A subtractive mixing method used in the printing process
• Represents colors with a combination of four inks on a white background
• Colors are mixed to lower the value, so it is called subtractive mixing.

HSV color space

• A method of composing colors based on hue, saturation, and value
• More intuitive than subtractive or additive mixing for specifying colors, so it is often used in visual arts
  • HSV color space colors are suitable for expressing in language, such as dark and dull blue
• Colors are based on the visible light spectrum, which is the area of electromagnetic waves that are visible to the human eye.