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Basic Color Theory for the Desktop
Reproducing consistent color can be the most difficult part of the design and production process. Yet it's often something that gets taken for granted until a proof or the final output reveals that you didn't get the colors you expected: The bright red apple that you photographed, scanned, and placed in PageMaker has lost some of its luster, and you're perplexed at why this should be.
Unfortunately, it's natural. You can't get the apple on your printed page to look like the apple you hold in your hand. It can look similar, but not the same, and it's all due to the nature of color and the processes used to reproduce it.
The phenomenon of seeing color is dependent on a triad of factors: the nature of light, the interaction of light and matter, and the physiology of human vision. Each factor plays a vital part and the absence of any one would make seeing color impossible.
In broad terms, we see color when a light source that emits a particular distribution of differently colored wavelengths of light strikes a colored object. The object reflects (or transmits) that light in another particular distribution of colored wavelengths, which is then received by the photoreceptors of the human eye. The photoreceptors are sensitive to yet another particular distribution of wavelengths of light, which is sent as a stimulus to the brain, causing us to perceive a particular color:
These aspects are further explained in the sections below:
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Light and Color
The nature of light, its natural and artificial sources, and how it contains the colors we see. |
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Light and Matter
How matter affects light by reflecting, transmitting, and/or absorbing certain wavelengths. |
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Human Vision
The physiology of how we see and interpret color. |
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Perception Variables
The factors that further affect how we see colors. |
This guide is intended as a general background to other technical guides that cover more specific aspects of color management systems, and color management in Adobe Photoshop 5.0 and Adobe Illustrator 8.0:
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