{"id":2226,"date":"2019-08-29T19:40:17","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T02:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eu.shop.wacom.eu\/us\/?p=2226"},"modified":"2026-06-05T09:23:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T16:23:01","slug":"color-theory-in-the-digital-space-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/color-theory-in-the-digital-space-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Color Theory in the Digital Space"},"content":{"rendered":"Part two in a\u00a0 two-part series. Read the first article here.<\/a>\n\nOh boy, here\u2019s some color theory.\n\nMy first article dealt more with the (dumbed-down) physics of how light forms color in the real world, and on palette use in the abstract.\u00a0 This one will be strictly about colors in digital space.\n\nIf you did the last article\u2019s homework (or have a passing familiarity with color theory), you\u2019ll know the eight different types of color schemes.\u00a0 If you didn\u2019t\u2014which I don\u2019t blame you for\u2014here\u2019s a decent guide.<\/a>\n\nThis, and many like it, do a much better job summarizing the types of color schemes than I could trying to reiterate them.\u00a0 So I won\u2019t. Instead, I\u2019ll lay out the basics of how they\u2019re put together, taking you a step closer to being able to make your own palettes from scratch.\n\nFirst, a little behind-the-scenes:\n

The Two Acronyms<\/h2>\nOut of the ~16,000,000 colors a monitor can display, ~15,999,997 are formed by mixing others. Digital painting is like traditional in that way, except when dealing with pixels, which are pure light, the actual process is the total opposite.\n\nThere are two most common ways colors are categorized in digital spaces, and aside from picking one at random or typing in a hex code, they\u2019re also the two most common ways you can \u201cmake a color from scratch\u201d in most image editors.\n

RGB<\/h2>\nThis is based on the ratios of three primary colors: <\/b>the colors that can\u2019t be formed by any others, but that when mixed in different proportions, form all <\/i>others. There are two possible sets, depending on your medium.\n\nIn the digital space, it\u2019s these particular shades of red, green, and blue:\n\n\"RGB\"\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not pretty, but it gets the job done.\u201d<\/blockquote>\nThese are called the additive primaries<\/b>.\n\nTraditional artists use red, yellow<\/i>, and blue. These are called the subtractive primaries<\/b>, and might be what you learned as \u201cthe primaries\u201d in art class. That\u2019s because of the physical differences between the two media: Paint grows darker the more colors you mix into it, eventually turning black, where pixels don\u2019t; they just grow closer to the last color you mixed in. So each set of primaries would make an incomplete range of colors for the other medium: You can\u2019t get yellow paint with any mixture of red, green, and blue paints, and you can\u2019t get most shades of green with just red, yellow, and blue pixels.\n\n* You can also make any color out of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black - A.K.A. CMYK - but that\u2019s the long way around and was developed so printers had more control over ink values.\n

HSV<\/h2>\nThe other three variables you can use to identify or make a color are hue, saturation, and value. This is known as the Munsell Color System<\/a>, although it\u2019s been modified and expanded for digital use.\n

Hue<\/h3>\nHue is your color\u2019s place in the rainbow:\n\n\"Hue\n\n \n\nWhen you describe a color with a ROYGBIV<\/a> word\u2014red, green, blue\u2014you\u2019re identifying its hue. In a way, this is the simplest trait, since it\u2019s just a position on a slider.\n\n \n\nPicture a color wheel. You\u2019ll probably think of something like this:\n\n\"Color\n\nWhich, for our purposes, we\u2019ll expand to the more comprehensive this:\n\n
\"Enhanced

Rainbow Spectrum Color Wheel<\/p><\/div>\n\nImage from Max Pixel<\/a>\n\n \n\nThis would more accurately be called a \u201chue wheel\u201d since that\u2019s the only color property it represents. It\u2019s just the spectrum from above, bent into a circle. That\u2019s why in image editors, hue is expressed in degrees, noting where on the circle that shade would be found.\n\n\"Annotated\n\n \n\nThe color schemes I advised you look up in the last article (did you?) are based on the colors\u2019 relative positions on a hue wheel. If you draw a straight line across the middle, it\u2019s a complimentary scheme. If you draw an equilateral triangle, across it, it\u2019s a triadic scheme - no matter where on the wheel it points. And so on.\n\nIf you\u2019re picking a palette off a color wheel with these methods, that will give you your base hues. Once you\u2019ve got those, the saturation and values of can be adjusted freely to give you your individual colors, but there are rules to help...\n

Saturation<\/h3>\nAlso known as chroma*. The intensity of your color. If, continuing to describe your color, you mention its strength\u2014reddish-gray, neon green, pale blue\u2014you\u2019re introducing saturation.\n\n*There\u2019s a difference but only in technical terms, like the difference between speed and velocity.\n\nA fully desaturated color is gray, a fully-saturated color is the color at its 'coloriest'.\n\n\"Coloriest\"\n\n \n\nBlack, white, and shades of gray are achromatic<\/b>. They\u2019re pure value, colors in name only, and are therefore considered mixers to either accentuate or water down other colors within a digital painting. And they can be used with any color scheme, if you\u2019re wondering: in fact, whenever you\u2019re selecting a palette and limiting yourself to a few colors, consider them freebies. There\u2019s a reason they say black goes with everything.\n\n \n\nAchromatics are also used as mixers\u2014they both linearly lower a color\u2019s saturation and modulate its value. A color mixed with white is called a tint<\/b> or a pastel.<\/b> A color mixed with black is a shade. <\/b>A color mixed with gray is a tone.<\/b>\n

Using Saturation<\/b><\/h4>\nWhen we call a piece colorful, what we usually mean is that its colors are very saturated. ...But maybe not as much as they seem. The most common newbie coloring mistake, bar none, is oversaturating your primaries. Reds are fire truck* red. Blues are hyperlink blue. It\u2019s what creates the \u201ckindergarten coloring\u201d effect you often see in amateur digital art.\n\n*No, this motif will not stop.\n\nLess saturated colors are subtler and therefore easy to mix without clashing, even if you pair up ones that \u201cshouldn\u2019t\u201d go together.\n\n \n\n\"Lo\n\n \n\nClip Studio Paint\u2019s color picker at 100% vs. 15% saturation, Compare how much less dramatic the second chart is. It might seem less interesting, but it\u2019s way more practical in an actual painting.\n\nPatches of different saturation can and should be used deliberately to guide the viewer\u2019s eye. We\u2019ll be drawn to a bright and colorful element on a darker, more muted background, or vice-versa. For example, one way CG goes wrong in movies is when the saturation of the computer-generated effect is far higher than the part that was shot on film, making it stick out like a glowing light. We\u2019ll cover more of this in the keys<\/b> section.\n\n \n\nDon\u2019t take this as an anti-saturation rant, but bear in mind that the thicker you lay it on, the more work you\u2019ll have to coordinating colors to they work together.\n\n
\"\"

Good for flags, bad for blending.<\/p><\/div>\n\n \n

Value<\/h3>\nLast but not least, there\u2019s value, the lightness or darkness of the color. When you add a brightness modifier to a color\u2014pink, medium green, dark blue\u2014you\u2019re introducing its value.\n\n \n\nOh, by the way, this is the most important one. If you convert your image to grayscale, you\u2019re viewing only its value, but note the whole image is still present. Value is the only thing that can define forms besides lines, and the only thing period that can define where lights and shadows fall.\n\n \n\nThis is why some artists will do their entire digital painting in grayscale, then go back and color it with overlay, soft light, adjustment, and\u2026 well, color layers. I do this myself whenever I know what I want the image to look like overall, but not the specific colors I want to use.\n\n \n\nWhen value meets the other two variables, that\u2019s when we get exact colors. If you describe one by its most specific name\u2014firetruck red, British racing green, Tiffany blue\u2014you\u2019re combining all three.\n\n \n\nImportant note:\u00a0 <\/b>Value balances out saturation, which is why the perceived saturation between two colors can be totally different than the numbers on the scale.\u00a0 Generally, the lower the value of your color, the higher the saturation you can get away with\u2014in fact, the higher saturation you might need to keep the perception the same.\n\n\"\"\n\nIn this complimentary Palette from Seeder on Colrd, value is inversely proportional to saturation.\n

Keys<\/h3>\n \n\nIn modifying your hues, you want to achieve contrast without sacrificing balance. This can be done via saturation and value keys: <\/b>ranges you confine certain parts of the image to, only going them being outliers.\u00a0\"CS\n\n \n\nSaturation key to the left, value Key to the right.\u00a0 Sorry to creep you out, this is just the best example from my own work. Original character design belongs to Olive Brinker<\/a>.\n\n \n\nIn a darker piece like the one above, the values start out low at the bottom and gradient to high at the top, with the deer\u2019s silhouette being a peninsula of black that sticks into the high value area, blocking out the light. However, within that black, the eye stands out as a dramatically high value-keyed part that draws attention straight to it. There are also some splotches of high value on the shoulders to draw attention to the character\u2019s trademark dress collar.\n\n \n\nThe entire piece is saturation-keyed very low, with only the parts that stand out the most being keyed higher. And even then, even in the highest saturation part, it only averages out to 50%.\n

Harmonies, Part II<\/h2>\n \n\nAs mentioned in the last article, achieving color harmony <\/b>is the goal when putting together a palette.\u00a0 And a good way to create it is to limit your palette and cut down on the number of unnecessary colors you use in a piece.\u00a0 But how do you know which colors you can limit it to?\n\n \n\nFashion writer Anuschka Rees<\/a> offers some of the simplest but most effective color pairing advice I\u2019ve ever heard: The fastest way to achieve cohesion within a color palette is to change two of those variables between your colors, but not all three.\n\nYou can change hue and saturation, but not value, pairing a medium-value, highly saturated red with a medium value, low-saturated green. Or saturation and value but not hue, creating a monochrome palette. Or\u2026 you get it.\n\n\"\"\n\nDesert Spice Palette<\/a> by Lacebutterfly on Colrd\n\n \n\n\u201cThat one almost constant property ... gives the palette a cohesive overall feel,\u201d says Rees, and \u201cthis mix of contrast [and] cohesion is the one thing all colour rules have in common and also the most important principle to keep in mind when you build your own colour palettes from scratch.\u201d\n\n \n\nIf you\u2019re anything like me, this might answer another question you had about picking color schemes from a hue wheel: How important is it I stick to the specific <\/b>hues of each color the shape dictates? And the answer is you\u2019ll have much more room to play within them if you follow Rees\u2019s rule.\n

Homework<\/h2>\n \n
    \n \t
  1. Go to r\/ImaginaryColorscapes<\/a> and analyze the hues, saturations, and values of the colors in various pieces. You can do the same with colorful images you\u2019ve found anywhere online, but this sub in particular is a great gallery of images from various different artists who all have different approaches to color - the only criterion being that they use a lot of them.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    New Sources:<\/h2>\n(Most of the references are the same as the last one were used, but here are the ones unique to this article.)\n