Colour plays a vitally important role in the world in which we live. Colour can sway thinking, change actions, and cause reactions. It can irritate or soothe your eyes, raise your blood pressure or suppress your appetite. As a powerful form of communication, colour is irreplaceable.
Colours mean more to us than simply pigment. They are forms of energy, and as such speak to us and interact with us on a nonverbal level. In a very real way, life is colour. Colour affects every part of our lives, our emotions, and our health.
Colour originates in light. As we perceive it, sunlight is colourless. However, the reality is that all the colours of the spectrum are present in white light. A rainbow, created through the diffusion of white light through raindrops, is testimony to this fact.
"Colour is the visual effect that is caused by the spectral composition of the light emitted, transmitted, or reflected by objects."
As illustrated in the diagram above, light goes from the source (the sun) to the object (the apple), and finally to the detector (the eye and brain).
1. All the" invisible" colours of sunlight shine on the apple.
2. The surface of a red apple absorbs all the coloured light rays, except for those corresponding to red, and reflects this colour to the human eye.
3. The eye receives the reflected red light and sends a message to the brain, resulting in you seeing the appropriate colour.
Colour Vision: How do your eyes ‘see’?
The human eye is like a camera lens - only able to transmit light to a recording medium (the retina). All interpretation of the data from the eye is processed by the brain, and is based on a variety of factors. The ability to see colour occurs in your brain.
Light is made up from three primary colors—red, green, and blue—and this is basically how our eyes see colour. The light-sensitive cells within the eye are split into two main types: rod-shaped and cone-shaped. The rods are the most sensitive to light, but cannot discriminate between different colours. The cones are less sensitive to light, but contain chemicals that allow them to
see one of the three primary colours. The blue- and green- sensitive rods equate very well to the colours that we think of as pure primary colours, but the rods that we use to see red light are only sensitive to light that we would consider to be orange. The information given by these three types of rod is sent to our brain, which interprets the information to give us a mental picture of the scene. So, while our eyes play a major part in the physical aspects of vision, it is our brain that determines what we see.
When mixed, colours in light will conform to the additive colour theory. As more colour is added in light, the colours will eventually fade out to white light. In the additive colour theory, the three primary colours are red, green and blue.
This is opposite to subtractive colour theory which is used for paints (etc). In this theory, as more colours are added the resulting colour becomes darker and fades to black. The primary colours of this theory are red, yellow and blue.
Colours mean more to us than simply pigment. They are forms of energy, and as such speak to us and interact with us on a nonverbal level. In a very real way, life is colour. Colour affects every part of our lives, our emotions, and our health.
Colour originates in light. As we perceive it, sunlight is colourless. However, the reality is that all the colours of the spectrum are present in white light. A rainbow, created through the diffusion of white light through raindrops, is testimony to this fact.
"Colour is the visual effect that is caused by the spectral composition of the light emitted, transmitted, or reflected by objects."
As illustrated in the diagram above, light goes from the source (the sun) to the object (the apple), and finally to the detector (the eye and brain).
1. All the" invisible" colours of sunlight shine on the apple.
2. The surface of a red apple absorbs all the coloured light rays, except for those corresponding to red, and reflects this colour to the human eye.
3. The eye receives the reflected red light and sends a message to the brain, resulting in you seeing the appropriate colour.
Colour Vision: How do your eyes ‘see’?
The human eye is like a camera lens - only able to transmit light to a recording medium (the retina). All interpretation of the data from the eye is processed by the brain, and is based on a variety of factors. The ability to see colour occurs in your brain.
Light is made up from three primary colors—red, green, and blue—and this is basically how our eyes see colour. The light-sensitive cells within the eye are split into two main types: rod-shaped and cone-shaped. The rods are the most sensitive to light, but cannot discriminate between different colours. The cones are less sensitive to light, but contain chemicals that allow them to
see one of the three primary colours. The blue- and green- sensitive rods equate very well to the colours that we think of as pure primary colours, but the rods that we use to see red light are only sensitive to light that we would consider to be orange. The information given by these three types of rod is sent to our brain, which interprets the information to give us a mental picture of the scene. So, while our eyes play a major part in the physical aspects of vision, it is our brain that determines what we see.
When mixed, colours in light will conform to the additive colour theory. As more colour is added in light, the colours will eventually fade out to white light. In the additive colour theory, the three primary colours are red, green and blue.
This is opposite to subtractive colour theory which is used for paints (etc). In this theory, as more colours are added the resulting colour becomes darker and fades to black. The primary colours of this theory are red, yellow and blue.
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