What Is Color, and How Do We See Color?

Every thing we see has colour, and colour plays a crucial role in how we understand the world. But the things in front of us don't necessarily have colour. Think of a traditional red apple. It will appear somewhat blue if you look at it under a blue-tinted light, and you won't see anything if you gaze at it in total darkness. What shade is the apple, then?

It turns out that colour is just how our eyes perceive energy and particular light wavelengths. Additionally, it might differ depending on a person's biology and the way their brain processes information, thus two people might not see the same thing as having the same colour.

Why Does Color Matter?

More than merely making something red, blue, or pink, colour has many other functions. It affects our moods and perceptions, and it has a big psychological impact on our life.

Warm photos may seem more uplifting or happy to us than cool ones, which we may perceive as tranquil or even gloomy. Some colours capture our attention more than others, and some of them may even prompt us to make purchases. Think at the logos and iconography of your favourite businesses; they are all carefully chosen to elicit particular purchasing patterns and cause you to identify certain characteristics with the business.

The colour of a product may increase our attraction to it. A ripe red tomato may appear particularly fresh and juicy, while bright candies are colourful and enjoyable. To boost consumer confidence or facilitate identification, many manufactured goods must remain the same colour throughout production. For example, each pill of a certain medication must match the one before it, and each can of paint must be blended to the desired shade.

Our daily lives involve the psychology of colour perception in many ways.

How Do We See Colors?

It's not always clear how humans see colour. Wavelengths of energy, reflections, and impulses zapping back and forth in our brains all play a role in the mechanics of colour vision. So, what does colour mean scientifically?

In elementary school, you might have heard that the rainbow has a specific colour scheme known as "ROYGBIV." The energy wavelengths match this pattern. The longest wavelength is violet, and the shortest is red.

Some materials will absorb particular wavelengths as sunlight, which is a combination of all wavelengths, strikes an object. When a wavelength is not absorbed, it is reflected. Our eyes then receive this reflected light, which causes us to identify the reflecting object's colour.

How Does Your Eye Influence Color Perception?

The process of colour perception doesn't stop when the light enters your eyes. Rods and cones are stimulated, and these cells communicate with the brain to tell it what colour we are perceiving. Different types of colours and lighting conditions activate cones and rods.

The way that people perceive colour can range greatly from person to person and from environment to environment. When compared to bright light, an object will seem differently in low light, and some people may have cones that don't work properly, leading to colour blindness. Your brain may perceive information slightly differently from the person next to you, even with cones that are functioning normally.

Light reaches the target.

Particular light waves bounce off some substances and are absorbed by others.

When the light is reflected, it enters the eye and is directed towards cones and rods via the lens.

In response to light, the cones and rods encode it into signals that the brain can decode.

The brain receives these impulses via an intricate network of neurons and synapses. The signals are subsequently interpreted as colour by the brain.

Finding objective colour measurements is crucial because with all these moving elements, an object that is reflecting particular wavelengths won't always appear the same to different observers.

How Cones in Our Eyes Affect Our Vision

Cones and rods are essential for processing vision and light. After entering your eyes, light is focused by the lens onto rods and cones, which are light-sensitive cells that each detect different wavelengths of energy. Cones are tailored for particular colour ranges whereas rods perform best in low light.

L-cones: Because they are sensitive to the longer wavelengths that form red light, L-cones—which make up 64% of our cones—are also referred to as red cones.

M-cones: M-cones, also known as green cones, make up 32% of the cones in the eye and react to green or medium-wavelength light.

S-cones: Since S-cones pick up shorter wavelengths, like blue, they are also known as blue cones. They account for just 2–7% of all cones.

Rods: Rods allow us to see at night without colour reception since they operate in low light. Additionally, they influence our peripheral vision.

Look at the M-cones to learn which colour humans see the best. The simplest colour for us to see and the colour that is closest to the centre of the spectrum is green.

What Is Color Theory?

It combines a lot of the knowledge we have about colour and transforms it into a tool for design. The colour wheel, which groups visible colours according to their inherently electromagnetic wavelengths, is probably familiar to you. For instance, the colour wheel goes from violet, which is the shortest, to red, which is the longest.

Additive and subtractive approaches are just two of the many ways to combine colours, although they typically work with primary, secondary, and tertiary colours. The term "primary colour" refers to a colour that cannot be made by mixing other colours. They are yellow, blue, and red. You may have noticed that whereas we have a colour receptor for green, we don't have one for yellow. How then do we perceive yellow?

Yellow is associated with sunlight and other strong lights for a reason. Yellow is one of the brightest colours, which explains why. Our brains mix the degrees of excitation in the red and green cones to detect it.