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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albert Henry Munsell | 2/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Henry_Munsell | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:46:17.052302+00:00 | kb-cron |
Munsell Hue is the attribute of color by which we distinguish red from green, blue from yellow, and other colors. Munsell chose several colors to be the principal hues. These are Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple. These hues were arranged in a circle. Each hue can be mixed with the same amount of the neighboring hues to create intermediate hues: yellow-red, green-yellow, blue-green, purple-blue, and red-purple. Each color can be defined by how much of each principal hue it contains. A color that is composed of just a principal hue would be given a number 5. So, the red primary would be given the number 5R. If you move to the left of the red hue, the number increases, with the color exactly in between red and yellow-red defined as 10R. Continuing around the circle, the number of the color goes back down to 1YR right after 10 red, until the color is composed of just the yellow-red primary, in which case the color would be 10YR. So, the number represents how much of the primary hue the color contains. Munsell Value defines the lightness of a color, or how much black or white the color contains. The neutral color scale, from black to white with neutral greys in between, all have a hue of 0, which means they do not contain any hue. Instead these colors only change in value. Black would have a value of 0N, with N designating value. White would have a value of 10N, and middle grey would have a value of 5N. A grey in between middle grey and black would have a value of 2.5N. This value scale is based upon visual experiments. The middle grey is visual perceived to have equal amounts of black and white, and so on for other greys. It was very important for Munsell to create a system that was based on the human visual response to color. The final dimension created was chroma. Before the Munsell color theory, chroma was not a term used in the art or scientific community. Instead, the intensity of color was defined as saturation. However, Munsell felt it appropriate to break up saturation into two different dimensions, namely value and chroma. Chroma defines the difference between a pure hue and a pure grey. So, a color with a chroma of 1 would be very close to a grey. It is important to note that the maximum chroma of a color is defined by the hue of the color. For example, a color with a yellow hue will have less chroma values than a color with purple hue. This is because of the human visual sensitivity to different hues. Again, this shows how the human visual system is modeled through the Munsell color theory. With each of the dimensions defined, it is now possible to distinguish a color based on its Munsell Notation. Take for example the color 2.5YR 3/4. This color is between red and yellow-red, but closer to yellow-red, has a value of 3 which is closer to black, and has a chroma of 4. Munsell also wanted to create a standard way of measuring and viewing color. To do this, he investigated the relationship between the color and the light source used for illumination. In short, he found that the light source used drastically effected the color perceived. To help in this investigation, Munsell visited the Edison Light Company. He eventually developed the standard for daylight viewing of colors for accurate color evaluation.
== Munsell color order system ==
To help display and organize his color theory, Munsell created the Munsell color system. It is set up to organize each color by the color's hue, value, and chroma. Each dimension of a color can be changed independently of the other dimensions. This helped Munsell organize the colors in a three-dimensional space, known as the Munsell Color Space. To create this space, Munsell first took the neutral colors, and aligned them vertically, with black on the bottom and white on the top. In between, the neutral greys were spaced out in equal visual intervals. So, as one moves up in the space, the value of each row increases. Next, Munsell organized the chroma as increasing away from the center. So as one gets farther away from the center, the chroma increases. The hue is positioned at different angles protruding away from the center neutral colors. The distance between each color was visually uniform, because the system was derived from vigorous testing of the human visual response to color. This arrangement turned out to be known as the Munsell color tree.