Munsell's Color Wizardry for Filmmakers & VFX Artists!
Have you ever wanted to unravel the mysteries of color and learn how to harness its power for film and VFX? Look no further than the Munsell color system! This ingenious system dissects color into three distinct components that will revolutionize your creative endeavors.
For years, artists refer to different colors by name, which of course we still do. And if you buy paints today, you’ll find many different names for red or blue or whatever. But Munson gave us a language to describe any color. He did this by breaking color into three different components.
Hue
Firstly, there’s hue - essentially, the “what” of color. Is it blue, red, purple, or yellow? When we describe a colour in day-to-day conversation, we’re generally referring to its hue.
Chroma
Next, we delve into chroma, which encapsulates the purity or intensity of a color. Picture it as the color’s vitality and vibrancy. Most people use the word saturation for this and that’s ok. Technically they’re different - chroma refers to the true color of an object and saturation refers to how it appears lit in an environment. But use whatever tickles your pickle, so long as you’re learning about colour!
Value
Lastly, but most certainly not leastly, there’s value. Quite simply, the lightness or darkness of a color!
If you add white, you increase the value and the color gets lighter. If you add black, you decrease the value, and the color gets darker.
Every single color in the world can be precisely described through hue, chroma, and value.
