Sunday, 2 February 2014

Studio Brief 2 - Does the Shade/Tint of a Colour effect It's Tone, or is Tone based solely on Hue?









Each hue has a variety of tints. Each tint is progressively lighter 
than the last as more white is added, this makes it more luminant.




The reverse is true for tints. Each tint is progressively darker due to
more black being added each time, making the shades less luminant.

From this we can conclude that the tint or shade of a colour affects its
luminance as opposed to it's hue or it's tone.


Tone is about how neutral the colour is. The tones of a colour start from
the purest, which is just the hue by itself, and get less and less pure as
more grey is added. The more grey is added, the more neutral the colour
becomes, and this makes for softer contrasts between colours as the
colour wheels below show.


Tone is different to saturation in that tone is how pure the colour is
based on how neutral/grey it is. Whereas saturation is based on how
pure a colour is in respect to its hue. Pure red is more saturated than
an orangey-red or a reddy-violet because it has a more defined point
on the colour wheel. It is generally quite difficult to tell how saturated
a colour is when it's by itself because of the subjective nature of colour.
When there are multiple different reds next to one another it is much
easier to spot which is the most saturated, as shown below.


The tone of a colour is heavily dependent on it's hue because some
colours are much brighter than others, as shown on the wheels below.



It is understandable why tone can be confused with tints and shades, 
because the tints and shades are making the hue more or less luminant 
and in doing so more or less bright. Essentially, tone is based on a
colours hue, but the exact value of the tone is decided by the tint or
shade of the variant of the hue. For example, if the yellow in the colour
wheel above had a stronger tint, it's counterpart colour on the tonal
colour wheel would be a more whiter grey, as the yellow would be
lighter. If the yellow had a shade, it's counterpart would be a darker
grey as the yellow would be darker.


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