QUALITIES
19
Science describes this quality as due to difference in the height or amplitude of ether waves impinging on the retina. Small amplitudes of the wave lengths given in paragraph 21 produce the sensation of dark green and dark red: larger amplitudes give the sensation of lighter green and lighter red.
CHROMA is the strength of a color.
(23) Chroma is the quality by which we distinguish a strong color from a weak one. To say that a rug is strong in color gives no hint of its hues or values, only its chromas. Loss of chroma is loosely called fading, but this word is frequently used to include changes of value and hue. Take two autumn leaves, identical in color, and expose one to the weather, while the other is waxed and pressed in a book. Soon the exposed leaf fades into a neutral gray, while the protected one preserves its strong chroma almost intact. If, in fading, the leaf does not change its hue or its value, there is only a loss of chroma, but the fading process is more likely to induce some change of the other two qualities. Fading, however, cannot define these changes.
Science describes chroma as the purity of one wave length separated from all others. Other wave lengths intermingling, make its chroma less pure. A beam of daylight can combine all wave lengths in such balance as to give the sensation of whiteness, because no single wave is in excess.[1]
(24) The color sphere (see Fig. 1) is a convenient model to illustrate these three qualities,—hue, value, and chroma,—and unite them by measured scales.
(25) The north pole of the color sphere is white, and the south pole black. Value or luminosity of colors ranges between these two extremes. This is the vertical scale, to be memorized as V,
- ↑ See definition of White in Glossary.
