The Nature of Color

When we think about color, we generally think of it in terms of a wagon being red or the sky being blue. In reality, objects in the world have no color to speak of. What they have are various reflective and absorptive qualities. When we see a "red" wagon, we are seeing a wagon that is reflecting red light back to our eyes and absorbing every other color of the spectrum. If we alter the color of the light source that is shining on that wagon, we will alter the color we perceive that wagon to be.

Perhaps the best way to approach the phenomenon of color is to explore it through three real life situations that each of us has probably experienced first-hand.

1. An image you are viewing on a computer monitor or television screen has a noticeably different color cast from the color of the original image or object.
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2. The colors in the picture hanging on your wall match your sofa in the morning, but not in the evening.
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3. The color image from your printer doesn't match what you see on your monitor.
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Two Different Kinds of Color

monitor color :
why it's more different than you think

environmental factors :
how other factors influence the way you see color

RGB vs. CMYK:
why the color your printer produces often doesn't match the color on your monitor