Color theory: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:28, 10 March 2025

Revision as of 03:20, 16 March 2025

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[[Isaac Newton]] (d. 1727) worked extensively on color theory, developing his own theory from the fact that white light is composed of a spectrum of colors, and that color is not intrinsic to objects, but rather arises from the way an object reflects or absorbs different wavelengths. His 1672 paper on the nature of white light and colours forms the basis for all work that followed on colour and colour vision.<ref>{{Citation |last=Marriott |first=F.H.C. |title=Colour Vision: Introduction |date=1962 |work=The Visual Process |pages=219–229 |url=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/B9781483230894500212 |access-date=2025-03-02 |publisher=Elsevier |language=en |doi=10.1016/b978-1-4832-3089-4.50021-2 |isbn=978-1-4832-3089-4}}</ref>

The RYB primary colors became the foundationthen of 18th-century theories of [[color vision]],{{Citation needed|date=September 2018}} as the fundamental sensory qualities that are blended in the perception of all physical colors, and conversely, in the physical mixture of [[pigment]]s or [[dye]]s. These theories were enhanced by 18th-century investigations of a variety of purely psychological color effects, in particular the contrast between "complementary" or opposing hues that are produced by color afterimages and in the contrasting shadows in colored light. These ideas and many personal color observations were summarized in two founding documents in color theory: the ''[[Theory of Colours]]'' (1810) by the German poet [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], and ''The Law of Simultaneous Color Contrast'' (1839) by the French industrial chemist [[Michel Eugène Chevreul]]. [[Charles Hayter]] published ''A New Practical Treatise on the Three Primitive Colours Assumed as a Perfect System of Rudimentary Information'' (London 1826), in which he described how all colors could be obtained from just three.

[[File:Color diagram Charles Hayter.jpg|thumb|Page from 1826 ''A New Practical Treatise on the Three Primitive Colours Assumed as a Perfect System of Rudimentary Information'' by [[Charles Hayter]]]]