Color Theory & Saturation
Color theory consists of several topics, including the definition of primary, secondary and tertiary colors and color harmonies such as complementary, triadic and analogous colors. All color theory is based upon the concept called a color wheel, which splits the visible colors into primary, secondary and tertiary colors, forming a circle.
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Primary Colors
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When building a color wheel, the first colors that are established are the primary colors. Primary colors are the three colors that cannot be created using existing colors. These three colors are red, blue and yellow. They are arranged in a triangular formation with yellow on the bottom, red on the left and blue on the right.
Secondary Colors
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The next step in building a color wheel is to establish the secondary colors. Secondary colors are three colors that are created by mixing two primary colors together. The three secondary colors are violet, green and orange. Red and blue mixed together create violet, yellow and blue make green and yellow and red mixed together create orange. Violet is placed directly opposite to yellow, between red and blue. Green is placed directly opposite to red and orange is placed directly opposite to blue.
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Tertiary Colors
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The final step in building a color wheel is to place the tertiary colors. Tertiary colors are created when a primary color is mixed with a secondary color. Examples of this occur when orange is mixed with red, it becomes red-orange, when blue is mixed with green it becomes blue-green and when yellow is mixed with orange it becomes yellow-orange. Tertiary colors are always written with a hyphen in between the primary and secondary color, the primary always written first. Tertiary colors separate the primary and secondary colors of their namesake.
Color Harmonies
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The color theory establishes three color harmonies, which are analogous, complementary and triadic. Analogous colors are four colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. An example of analogous colors are yellow-orange, orange, red-orange and red. Complementary colors are colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. Blue is a complement to orange, violet is a complement to yellow and red is a complement to green. Triadic colors are the colors that form a triangle on the color wheel. The three triadic sets are the primary, secondary and tertiary colors.
Saturation
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Color saturation is a measurement of how pure a color is. The higher the saturation level a particular color is, the more pure the color. Another way of stating the definition of saturation is: the more gray that is in the image, the lower the saturation level. Digital saturation involves increasing or decreasing the numbers of pixels of pure color in a photograph. Manual saturation, however, is affected by adding the complement to lower the saturation, or decreasing the complement which increases the saturation.
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