Colours and their meanings

Color meanings - 

Every one of us have his favorite colour and colours carry lots of meanings with them. Yes , colours do effects our lives for both youngsters and adults. 

Example - 

If you had to give an option for your 5-Year old daughter to choose between a pink bag vs a blue one she would probably go for the pink version as it is more 'girlish'

As for us adults , if we were to buy a car we would be very careful and think what suits us most and what colour we imagine us driving, Why not Pink? "Too 'girlish'" . Why not Yellow ? 'It's Ugly!' . So yes, colours do have control over such things in our lives!

Here is an example of companies and businesses that use colours at their advantage - 

Lister below are few meanings of the colours - 

Red

       - Romantic

       - Commanding

       - Hot

       - Alert 

       - Fun

Orange

             - Burning

             - Cozy

             - helpful

             - active

             - inspiring

Yellow

             - Curious 

             - Coward

             - ill

             - bright

Green 

           - Lucky

           - Patient

           - Relaxed

           - balanced 

Blue 

         - Technical

         - free

         - protective

         - cold

         - peaceful

Violet 

           - Fantastic

           - Royal

           - Luxurious

           - Intelligent

Contrast

Contrast  - 

When choosing colours one should be careful and think twice on what colours to choose and make sure that it fits it's purpose. If you have for example text and want it to be visible without any problems to be read , one should apply high contrast such as Black and White. If you choose bad contrast for your text , this will eventually hurt the readers eyes and make tiring them!

Bad Contrast

Best choice of contrast to use with text. (Black and white)

Websites such as 'Snook.ca' will give you an example on how the text will be displayed with the colours that one choose so to get an idea on how these will eventually look

Black background with White text

High Contrast - 

High contrast colours are those that on the colour wheel are complimentary to each other such as -

Purple and yellow
Green and Red
Orange and Blue


The image below is an example to show how colours should and should not be applied.

Pixel Values

Pixel Values - 

The pixel value is a stored value that records the amount of brightness that the pixel is emitting and what colour it should be. If one is working with 8 bit , the amount of colours can be that of 255. If the pixel is set at 0 it will display as black while if it is set to 255 it will display as white.

Every image on the screen is made up of pixels and when all this are set to their correct pixel values the image will form and displayed as it should.

http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rbf/HIPR2/value.htm

ICC Profiles

ICC Profiles - 

When photographers take photo's and sell them to their client's , they will want to make sure that the photo is displayed the same as they view it on their system.

ICC stands for International colour consortium. The company that started all this.

A simple example of what ICC is capable off -

When you rent a DVD, on either way of the box there are stated the name of the movie , actors and a summary of the film.

ICC Profiles works very similar to this explanation , they will know how an image is going to look on the screen they are viewed and will tell the user what the darkest and lightest tone and what colours the file is capable off. The amount of range of colours and also the distribution and relationship that there is in each of the tones and colours.


There are two types of ICC profiles , Input and outpute profiles.

An example of how it works in the image below -

https://webcube-general.s3.amazonaws.com/eizo/media/contentassets/2014/10/27/01_gra.gif
http://www.color.org/index.xalter
http://www.digital-photography-workflow-basics.com/color-management-overview.html
http://www.digital-photography-workflow-basics.com/icc-profile.html

Hue , Saturation

Hues - 

Hues are basically the Primary and secondary colours (Rainbow colours)that one have on the colour wheel , such as Red, Green , blue etc..  Secondary hues are the colours that we create by mixing the primary hues.

Hues are measured in degrees , from 0 to 359 degrees.

Saturation - 

If an image has low saturation it will be as if it is washed - out  whilst on the other hand , if the image has high saturation the colours will be more vibrant and pure.


An example in the image below shows the last image with washed out colours , which means low saturation settings are set (-50)whilst the middle image has higher saturation settings (+50) and is making the colours more clearer and vibrant. The first image is the original image.

Colour depth

Colour depth - 

Colour depth is referring to the number of bits that a pixel represents in a monitor to display a colour. The higher the bits/pixel the better the image will be displayed and this will also increase the variety of colours.

The early monitors that were invented only supported 1-bit colours and these where in black and white(Monochrome). Example  - The Apple Macintosh and Atari ST.

Apple Macintosh

Our home monitors nowadays supports 32 bit colour which can vary between 16.7million colours. The higher the bits the more memory one requires tho every computer nowadays comes with a video card that supports high bit colours.

24 bit and 32 bit can support up to 16,777,215. The 32bit has an alpha channel that makes it better since it can support up to 4,294,967,296. The alpha channel will help the colours create more gradients,transparencies and shadows .


One can clearly see that the third box has more quality than the others as the pixels are producing more colours than the others.

Comparison 

Raster VS Vector

Raster VS Vector -

Raster images are based on PIXELS. A pixel is one of many that is used to create an image.

An example of pixels is the image below.
3 pixels by 6 pixels.  A pixel is the smallest thing that one can expect in a display monitor.

PPI stands for pixels per inch and one can calculate the pixels by counting the pixels in each inch and this will represent the resolution.

Raster images are also known as Bitmap images.

Since it is made of pixels , once zoomed one will be decreasing the image quality and will reveal the pixels and make them visible.


A perfect example of this is the image below -

A perfect image when in it's proper resolution, but when zoomed the image quality is ruined.












Vector - 
Vector images are not based on pixels!

Vector images are geometrical shapes that are created by a mathematical equation. Vector images can be stretched without loosing the image quality. A good example of this is for example when someone is writing in Microsoft word at size 12 and one increase it to size 100, the letters are bigger and will still remain crystal clear. This is because the fonts are vector type and when they are increased in size a mathematical equation is worked out in order to maintain the same quality(good quality) of the image.


What program to use ?

One should also consider the programs to use when designing an image/logo.  If you are going to work with vector images , Illustrator must be used whilst Photoshop is used to create raster images. One can work with illustrator and then import the work to Photoshop to add extra texture to the image/logo.

Vector VS Bitmap

During class we were given a task to recreate a character from space invaders with sticky notes. Space invaders characters are created from pixels(Raster) 1 pixel represents one sticky note that we had to stick on the wall. First we counted the pixels to know how many sticky notes we will be using and ended with the final result -