I am thinking about it right now and it’s giving me a headache…
All colors can easily be described as a wavelength. “Red,” for example, describes colors around 650nm or so.
Depends on what is defined as a color.
‘Coffee’, ‘orange’, ‘tangerine’, ‘lemon’, ‘mud’ and the like are all nouns unto themselves. Some (like ‘orange’) are specifically designated as a color as well. The rest just have a mental image of the associated color that goes with it.
One could say that a particular brown is “darker than coffee” or “lighter than mud”; but those are perhaps less descriptive than one might want.
In art world, colors are sometimes described as warm or cool, and of high or low intensity and value. And primary, secondary, and tertiary. But if I described a color as a cool secondary of high value and intensity, would you know whether I was talking about hooker’s green or vermillion?
I wouldn’t know, and I really wouldn’t want to know why it is called hooker’s green.
Lizzy, rest your pretty head for a while. I think that in the spirit of your question, the answer is no. Not many people know that a wavelength of 650 nm is “red,” for example. I believe that in observational experience - i.e. what all of us live - there is ONLY comparison to describe color or communicate it to someone else. After all, we’ve all considered the fact that what looks like red to us may not look that way to someone else, so every reference to that color has to be just that - a reference.
And now, back to live action. xo, C.
friedo nailed it. All colors can be described in terms of what wavelengths they reflect (or, in the case of TV’s and monitors, the wavelengths they make.)
Go into a decent picture editing program and go into RGB mode, and you can define all colors as percentages of red, green, or blue. Just substitute the wavelengths for those colors and voila, no need to describe a color with reference to another color, just in reference to actual wavelengths of light.
From a technical standpoint, you can describe any color in various ways – percentages of RGB, or hue, brightness, and saturation, or CMYK printing.
From the point of view of an author describing exactly what a color looks like to a non-technical person, there isn’t a way to describe it other than by referring to another object.
“So, what you’re telling me, Percy, is that something you have never seen is slightly less blue than something else you have never seen.”
Actually, Cecil has addressed a variant of this question in his column on: Could early man only see three colors?.
Perhaps this will give some insight into what you are asking.
Only certain colors can be described with the wave length. You won’t be able to find the wave length of say brown. You really need to describe a distribution of wavelengths. Because of how the human I works you can get most of the colors by describing the relative amplitude of red green and blue light. I think that this will get most of the color space but not all.
Interesting conversation. I actually thought the OP was asking a more or less metaphysical question, (literally), hence, my response.
Flip through the samples of a paint store. You will find that the folks in marketing find all sorts of interesting ways to describe colors other than by reference to other colors, by comparison to something of similar color (e.g., candy apple red) as GrizzRich mentions being the most common.
Dont mean to get pissy here, but I think calling something “candy apple” is a reference to a color, regardless of what you call it. I think that those efforts of paint stores to describe colors are still reducable to an attempt to get someone to imagine a color based on its similarity to something of a similar color. I interpret the question as an inquisition into the possiblity of getting someone else to know what color you have in mind without making reference to something very similar. In a larger sense, and no doubt a different question, is it possible to describe a color without some analogy? Aside from the physical, I don’t think so. xo, C.
CC I think you are correct. I would probably go so far as to say that you cannot describe any physical sensation to someone else without referencing back to a sensation experienced by both people.
yes you can actually. Brown is in fact nothing more than dark yellow. Of course you cannot describe brown with only wavelength but there is a wavelengh that matches.
You need at least three dimensions to fully describe color You can use RGB, hue chroma & luminance or CMY(K) for subtractive color when printing.
Candy apple typically describes the metalflake layer under translucent paint. It doesn’t describe a color since it can potentially be any color.
Wavelength does not count…If I had never heard of Magenta, for example, you could not successfully make me understand by describing the wavelength. Your only option would be to reference the color red to get me to understand (or show me an object that was magenta).
Padeye, while that may be true when talking about translucent paint, in PBear’s use it is definitely a color by analogy. Namely, analogy to the bright red color of, um, candy apples.
I’m with CC on the metaphysical side of the question. I know what bee purple is – the wavelength of ultraviolet light just above the visible light spectrum which bees can see while humans cannot. But that doesn’t describe the sensation of experiencing that color in a way that “red” does, because we can’t understand the sensation unless we can compare it to another sensation, and we none of us have ever seen bee purple. (Unless you’re a bee with excellent typing skills.)
–Cliffy
Headache clearly lifting.
This topic has come up before. You need to have a frame of reference to understand any description. I actually read a post to the effect that you couldn’t define a word using other words that needed to be defiened. :smack:
How about if I try to describe red to a newborn. “the color of electromagnetic radiation at 650nm wavelength in a vacuum.” Not even a glimmer. “The color of a fire truck.” Nothing. “The color of mama’s nipples when they’re sore” Not a clue. “Nipples! These things I’m pointing at.” Well, he spit up some but I don’t think he made the connection. Conclusion: babies are stupid.
How about describing it by Pantone number?