Transcripts
1. Class Intro: The experience color all around us, both digital and physical, but its color in both the mediums the same? Or do they behave and mix different? This is exactly what we'll explore in this class. And no, they are not the same. Digital colors are the colors light. Unlike physical colorants like pains and pigments that absorb and reflect light. If this confuses you a little, don't worry. By the end of this class, you will have a much better understanding of colors and colorants and know exactly what it means. We'll be exploring digital colors without throwing in scientific or too many technical details. This classes for both the very curious and the new learn as trying to get a grasp of what physical colors and digital colors really are and how they differ without any perplexing explanations so that you understand them better to reach your desired outcomes quicker. We'll begin by actually looking into how the digital colours, colors, Julie, differ, then skim on what Visible Life is and how it stimulates us to see color. We'll then explore color both in the digital medium and in the real world. You'll see how digital colours mixed differently from how physical colors do. And learn about what colour models are. Then will look into the RGB sliders, hex codes and values that give us the controlled tweak and mix these digital colours. And conclude by skimming on what color matching systems like Pantone are. If you are really curious and excited, I think this brief classes for you. So if you're ready, let's get started already.
2. Digital Color & Real World Color: We see color around us and on-screen, they look very similar, if not exact, but is digital color the same as we experienced color in the real world around us. Let's explore that. Let's try mixing colors both digitally and physically and see what the result in. We can take any colors. But for simplicity, let's stick to the basics and work with red, green, and blue. So here I have the physical red, green and blue colors on the left and the digital red, green and blue colors on the right. Let's start by mixing the physical red and green colors. So they create a muddy brown. Now let's make a digital red and green colors. This is yellow, not brown. Strange. Next, mixing green and blue creates a blue greenish color. And when mixed digitally, they create desire to appoint both the colors look quite similar, but something weird is happening. The colors are behaving differently and not quite how you'd expect them to win makes digitally from when mixed physically. Let us quickly see what mixing all the three colors together result in both the different mediums. So mixing red, green, and blue physically results in a color close to black. And when mixing them digitally, it creates white. Very weird. I know. Not just color mixing is different when done in the digital medium compared to when mixing physical colors. But the perceived colour of any physical object in the real world is also affected or rather influenced by the kind of lighting the object is being seen under. Don't get confused. Here's a demonstration. This is an A4 sized white paper, and it looks white, right? The current lighting in this room is a fluorescent tube that emits white light and natural sunlight from a window. This is usually how a white paper looks. But what if the lighting is changed? Lighting in this room is a single bulb that emits blue light. There is almost no sunlight or any other colored light in this room. Now pay close attention here. What color is the paper now? Blue, right? Your brain might be trying to convince you to see white because that's how you expect white paper to look like. But it is blue here. By color picking the paper from both lighting setups, we can actually observe better how lighting affects the perceived colour of physical objects. But this is not a problem with screens or digital colors. Here is a digital image of a white paper. The room is lit with a white fluorescent light and sunlight. And here is the same digital image in the same room lit with no other colored light, but blue. So no matter what the lighting setup of the room that digital colours are not influenced, are affected. One last thing that you will relate to is how the perceived colour of any physical object slightly shifts when we scan it and send it into the digital space, or when we print something out of the digital space. So one thing is for sure, the way color behaves in the digital medium is definitely different from how it does in the physical real world. And this is exactly what we will further explore in this class and try to understand more about digital color so that we can work with it better and achieve the desired outcome quickly without confusing ourselves.
3. Visible Light & Color: For this part, I need you to unlearn a briefly forget what you know about or think light is, we'll start a fresh so that you understand it better. Also will try to understand and get done with this part quick so that it doesn't turn out boring. So if you're ready, everything in this universe is made up of matter and energy. Energy is the capacity of getting some work done. And there are many different forms of energy out of which referring to a specific form of energy that is made up of electric and magnetic fields and propagates. Maneuvers in waves is named life because of being made up of electric and magnetic fields and the wavelike movement, they are also called electromagnetic waves. Now, just like in the ocean, not all the waves are the same. Some are short, and some are lot. Similarly, the wavelike movement of these electromagnetic waves are light, very in measurements. Some waves are as big and tall as buildings, and some are small and tiny as Adams and the rest of them fall in between. And what's surprising is that majority of all these waves are not visible to the human eye. The narrow range that we can actually see is called visible light. And we'll get to it in a moment. All of these varying waves of light, if we group them together from longest to shortest, we create what is called the electromagnetic spectrum. Think of it like a ruler. It's like a reference chart of all the different measuring waves of light. And as we learn how most of them are not even visible to us humans, the narrow selection out of these that is actually visible to us is called visible light. So usually, when we are talking about live, mostly in art and design, we are actually talking about visible light and not light, including all its other kinds. The wave visible light is visible to us is that each of the many different measuring waves that make up that narrow range of visible light are of a certain color. So when one of these waves are combinations of them enter our eyes, we see color. Visible light and color are like in this relationship where we experienced scholar only event of visible light wave of that certain Gullah stimulates our eyes and the mind. Without visible light, that would be no colour. And in fact, without visible light, nothing would be visible to us. And there are two ways how visible light enters your eye before you see any color. Either directly into your eyes from the source or after being reflected off of other objects. This is because all the different measuring waves of light, from the longest to the shortest, interact differently with objects. Some light waves pass through objects and some get reflected off of them. And the visible light waves are the kind that gets reflected off of most objects. Whether the visible light wave entered directly into your eyes from the source or was a reflected from an object or surface, is what creates all the difference between digital colours and physical colors. So to summarize, we see a certain color when a wave of visible light of that certain color enters our eyes and stimulates it. And the brain, that visible light wave enters the eye directly from the source or after being reflected off of an object or surface.
4. Color in Digital Medium: The colors you use in the digital medium behave differently from the colors in the real world, because digital colors are actually colored light. And the colors in the real world, I pigments are colorants that actually affect and influence the light falling on them before they reach our eyes. Let me explain. Will understand digitally colors much better if we begin by understanding that displays, that actually display them. You see over many, many years of thought, discoveries, experimentations, and improvisations, we came to a conclusion that actually by only using red, green, and blue colored lights, we can produce almost all the colours of visible light that we are able to see. Colored lights are the keyword here. We're not talking about paints or other pigments, but colored visible lights. And for this reason, the red, green, and blue colors are called the primary colors of light. For you really only need these three colored lights to create almost any other color of light. And this is exactly how the displays we use to create digital paintings and design work. The screens of these devices are nothing but images of light. You've heard of pixels. A pixel is this very small individual square of colored light. And multiples of these together, actually millions make up most of the displays that displayed digital colours, which now you know, are actually colours of visible light. Unlike pains or pigments. Also, a single pixel is very, very small. Think of how small it would be that more than a million of these fit in the display of the device that you are watching this video on right now. Further, a single pixel is made up of three colored lights, also called the sub pixels. I think you can now guess are red, green, and blue are the primary colors of light. So again, a very small group of red, green, and blue colored light is called a pixel. Millions of these pixels together make up the displays of the devices that we use to work with digital color, which are actually colored lights. So when we are using digital colours to paint in Photoshop or procreate, we are actually plainly tweaking colored lights. And the display is doing nothing but turning on and off the millions of pixels or the red, green, and blue colored lights really, really quick. In fact, this is how it looks when you zoom in real close to pixels doing their work. So red and green, adding up to yellow digitally is just how visible light works. And that is because colours of light mixed additively. And what is that? Don't worry, we'll get to it in a moment. And after that, we'll also know why the three primary colors of light add up to create white. Remember, we saw how displays are not affected by the lighting setup in a room. And that's because the visible light from your display is direct light. It reaches into your eyes directly from the source of its origin, the display. So now you know, digital color behaves differently from physical color because it is nothing but colored light. And so when painting or working with digital colours, we are actually just tweaking colored lights. So if you want to get better with digital colours, learning about and studying the RGB color model will help you make better color predictions and achieve your desired outcomes quickly. And if you're wondering what a colour model is, we'll be looking into it and the next lessons.
5. Color in Real World: In the previous lesson, we looked into how digital color is actually just colored lights reaching our eyes directly with no interference. And the only big thing that really creates the difference between digital color and physical color is that unlike the visible light from Displays, reaching our eyes directly, physical color in the real world around us is experienced after visible light is reflected by them before they enter our eyes. This direct and reflected way of visible light reaching our eyes is mostly where the difference in the behavior of digital and physical colors arises. Remember, we talked about how we would not be able to see any color if there were no visible light. It's just like how you cannot see any objects or pains in a dark room because they have no light of their own. And so only when visible light reflects off them and then reaches our eye is when we are able to see them. And this is why only because of reflected visible light, we are able to experience the colors around us in the real world. And the reason why upon mixing physical red and green colors, we don't get yellow like digital colors is because when visible light bounces off or gets reflected off of these colorants, like pains and other pigments. Many of the visible light waves get absorbed by the paint pigments. And the remaining light waves that don't get absorbed are the only ones that get reflected back and enter our eyes. Which is not the case with digital color for the reach our eyes directly without any of those visible light waves being absorbed anywhere before reaching our eyes. And this absorption of certain visible light waves by colorants in the real world when mixing colors is why the digital and physical colors don't behave the same way. For example, this piece of paper looks blue because it absorbs all the other visible light waves of all colors except for this blue. And because this blue is not being absorbed, that is the visible light wave that is being reflected back and into our eyes. For another example, the body of this keyboard is black, not because it's only Reflecting Black, but actually it is not reflecting any color at all. This looks black because it is absorbing all the visible light waves, and hence, black is the absence of light. This is also why you see black when you close your eyes for your eyelids, prevent any visible light wave from entering the eye. And that absence of any visible light wave is black. Maybe from that explanation, you can guess why the keys of this keyboard look white than it is because this white color and is not absorbing any visible light wave and reflecting back all of them that fall on it. And so we perceive white when all the visible light waves are reflected back, or at least three primaries of light, red, green, and blue. Remember in the beginning when we mix the digital red, green, and blue colors, that is exactly what is happening here. In the digital medium. If you recall, pixels and pixels, we see black when the pixels are not turned on. And similarly, we see white when the pixels are turned on, including all its three sub pixels, red, green, and blue. So to summarize, we experienced colors in the real world after the visible light waves falling on them get affected and then reflected by them to finally reach our eyes. And while being reflected, many visible light waves get absorbed by the colorants. The ones not absorbed are what get to reach our eyes. Unlike discipline colors that reach our eyes directly without any of the light waves getting absorbed. So if you work more traditionally with physical colors, you would want to learn about and study the R YB or red, yellow, blue colour model for physical colors makes attractively. And how digital and physical colors really differ in their mixing is what we'll look into next.
6. Color Mixing & Color Models: Color mixing is studying how colours of light or colorants mix together. There are two ways how colors get mixed, either additively or subtractive Lee, the colors of light makes additively. And so whenever we speak of additive mixing, we are always referring to the colors of light. And as we learned previously, that red, green, and blue are the primary colors of light, additive mixing is usually about these three colors of light. And by mixing additively, it means the visible light waves of the colors reach our eyes collectively without cancelling out or subtracting any other of the visible light waves. Subtractive mixing is how physical colorants like pains and pigments mixed together. They subtract or absorb certain waves of visible light to create another color. The RBI be red, yellow, blue, and CMYK, cyan, magenta, yellow and black colour models make subtractive Lee, speaking of color models, they are structured systems of using view, define a primary colors to create a larger range of other colors. Most well-known color models are the RGB, CMYK, and our yB. The RGB or red, green, and blue colour model is an additive color model, building on the three primary colors of light. Mixing the red and green colors of light, we get yellow lie on mixing green light with blue light, we get psi or light. And mixing blue light and red light gives magenta. Mixing. All the three primaries together gave wildlife. And the absence of any color of light is black, cyan, magenta, and yellow from the secondary colors of light. By varying the proportions of these three primary colors, you can create all colours of visible line. For example, by lowering the intensity of the green light, we get orange line. The R YB or red, yellow and blue colour model might even be familiar to you. But this is the column model that is mostly taught InDesign and art schools are yB as a subtractive color model and is used for physical colors. Mixing red and yellow colorants create orange, yellow and blue create green. Blue and red create purple or violet. Mixing all the three primaries together will create something close to black, orange, green, and purple or violet from the secondary colours. Cmyk or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black is another subtractive color model used mostly in printing. So to summarize, there are two ways how colors mix the colors of light makes additively, That is, the do not cancel out or subtract other visible light waves and reach the eye collectively. Whereas colorants like pains and other pigments makes subtractive L0, which means they subtract certain other visible light waves to create a new color. The RGB colour model is based on the colors of light, which makes additively and is the model that you should be following when working with digital colours. The R, YB, and CMYK are subtractive color models that are based on how physical colours behave in the real world. Cmyk model is mostly used for printing. And the IIB colour model is what's popularly used for design and R. So now you know what colour models are and how the mix. Next, we'll look into what color matching and management systems like pant on our thoughts.
7. RGB Color Sliders, Hex Codes & Values: Now that you have a better understanding of how colors of light makes and how the displays in screens display those digital colours, will now explore the IGB sliders that help us tweak and mix these small and tiny colored lights in the displays to create a range of other colors when working digitally. And also learn about the hex codes and how they represent and identify each possible digital color. The RGB sliders in your digital apps give you the control to tweak the intensity of these colored lights in your display, or the sub pixels of the millions of pixels that make up your display. There is a slider for each of the primary colors of light, red, green, and blue. Just as we learned in the previous lessons, that absence of any visible light is black. So if you turn down the intensity of each of the three colors, we get black for all the pixels have been turned off. And just as adding the three primaries together gives wide, you turn up the intensity of each of the three colours to the max, we get white from the previous demonstration of how varying the intensities of these three colors and combining them to create other colors is exactly how you use these RGB sliders to create other digital colours. So to create orange, increase the intensity of red twofold, and eyeball the intensity of green until you find your preferred orange. Or to create Bubba will increase the intensity of red outlet and then increase the intensity of green a little less than read an eyeball blue until you are happy with your preferred bubble. It also wanted to IQ red and green sliders further to explore and create the colour you are actually after. It's really all exploration and experimentation, trying to create your desired color using these IGB sliders. Learning about and having a basic understanding of the RGB color model can really save you time and extra effort. Now let's say you are happy with the Mexico created, but how do you identify it again? Should you wish to use it again or even shared with someone else. Some apps let you save the swatch, but there has to be a better and simpler way of referring to it and sharing it quickly. Well, there are 1000 ways to solve a problem, but to make it really easy here, you can refer to a specific mix of colors using the values of each slider here, also known as the RGB values. For example, the RGB values of desk color are 73, for read, a 170, and for green, and 274 blue. The RGB values are usually written in parenthesis, separated by commas. So the RGB value of this scholar would be written like this. But remembering up to a three digit number for each color can get a little tricky sometimes. So an easier way of referring to these digital colors by specifying each colors value is by using the hex codes. The hex code is a group of six digits with each pair of two digits representing one of the three primary colors, red, green, or blue. The six digits of hex code are written after the hash or pound character in the beginning. Each of all the possible digital colors can be referred to are identified using the unique RGB values or the hex codes. Now which one you choose to use is absolutely your preference.
8. Pantone - A Color Matching System: By now I think you would agree how different digital and physical colors really are. The colors you may be seeing on your screen. Might show up slightly or even drastically different on their clients or users phone screen. Or even sometimes you are happy with the color choices digitally. But the moment you print it, you might get really disappointed because the printed color might not match what you see on your screen. Color matching and management systems are what tried to bridge the gap and help achieve a consistent appearance of the colors. The most popular color matching system is the Pandora. Color matching and management systems like pantheon create colors and identify them with unique numbers are names, and list them in the guide for the users to refer to so that everyone is show they are talking about and referring to the same color, whether they are seeing it on different screens or printing that discipline colors. Color matching and management systems are a great tool and surely held when the consistency in appearance of your colors across mediums is your priority.
9. Concluding: I think by now you must have a good idea of what digital colours are and how they differ from the colors in the real world around us. And maybe now you also have a good understanding of how to get better at working with and using digital colours and reach your desired color choices without getting publics. Thank you for taking this class and please check out my other classes. Should they interest you to do check them out. And I hope to see you in the next class.
Tushar Deb., Designer & Artist
