Lightness in the context of "Color"

In color theory, hue is one of the properties (called color appearance parameters) of a color, defined in the CIECAM02 model as "the degree to which a stimulus can be described as similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet," within certain theories of color vision.

Hue can typically be represented quantitatively by a single number, often corresponding to an angular position around a central or neutral point or axis on a color space coordinate diagram (such as a chromaticity diagram) or color wheel, or by its dominant wavelength or by that of its complementary color. The other color appearance parameters are colorfulness, saturation (also known as intensity or chroma), lightness, and brightness. Usually, colors with the same hue are distinguished with adjectives referring to their lightness or colorfulness - for example: "light blue", "pastel blue", "vivid blue", and "cobalt blue". Exceptions include brown, which is a dark orange.

Pastels or pastel colors belong to a pale family of colors, which, when described in the HSV color space, have high value and low or medium saturation. They are named after the artistic medium made from pigment and solid binding agents, similar to crayons. Pastel sticks historically had lower saturation than paints of the same pigment, hence the name of this color family.

The colors of this family are usually described as soothing, calming, and nostalgic. They tend to lean towards ideas of simplicity and help to contrast against the bolder and brighter colors that trend in our world. They are integrated into interior design in many places, such as healthcare to help soothe anxiety, or in classrooms to help the mind focus. Pastel colors work to oppose the brighter, bolder colors that tend to be common in many other places.

Brightness is an attribute of visual perception in which a source appears to be radiating/reflecting light. In other words, brightness is the perception dictated by the luminance of a visual target. The perception is not linear to luminance, and relies on the context of the viewing environment (for example, see White's illusion).

Brightness is a subjective sensation of an object being observed and one of the color appearance parameters of many color appearance models, typically denoted as ${\displaystyle Q}$. Brightness refers to how much light appears to shine from something. This is a different perception than lightness, which is how light something appears compared to a similarly lit white object.

Varieties of the color red may differ in hue, chroma (also called saturation, intensity, or colorfulness), lightness (or value, tone, or brightness), or in two or three of these qualities. Variations in value are also called tints and shades, a tint being a red or other hue mixed with white, a shade being mixed with black. A large selection of these various colors are shown below.

White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on television and computer screens is created by a mixture of red, blue, and green light. The color white can be given with white pigments, especially titanium dioxide.

In ancient Egypt and ancient Rome, priestesses wore white as a symbol of purity, and Romans wore white togas as symbols of citizenship. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance a white unicorn symbolized chastity, and a white lamb sacrifice and purity. It was the royal color of the kings of France as well as the flag of monarchist France from 1815 to 1830, and of the monarchist movement that opposed the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (1917–1922). Greek temples and Roman temples were faced with white marble, and beginning in the 18th century, with the advent of neoclassical architecture, white became the most common color of new churches, capitols, and other government buildings, especially in the United States. It was also widely used in 20th century modern architecture as a symbol of modernity and simplicity.

In colorimetry, CIECAM02 is the color appearance model published in 2002 by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) Technical Committee 8-01 (Color Appearance Modelling for Color Management Systems) and the successor of CIECAM97s. It has since been superseded by CIECAM16.

The two major parts of the model are its chromatic adaptation transform, CIECAT02, and its equations for calculating mathematical correlates for the six technically defined dimensions of color appearance: brightness (luminance), lightness, colorfulness, chroma, saturation, and hue.

The Munsell color system is a color space that specifies colors based on three properties of color: hue (basic color), value (lightness), and chroma (color intensity). It was created by Albert H. Munsell in the first decade of the 20th century and adopted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as the official color system for soil research in the 1930s.

Several earlier color order systems in the field of colorimetry had placed colors into a three-dimensional color solid of one form or another, but Munsell was the first to separate hue, value, and chroma into perceptually uniform and independent dimensions, and he was the first to illustrate the colors systematically in three-dimensional space. Munsell's system, particularly the later renotations, is based on rigorous measurements of human subjects' visual responses to color, putting it on a firm experimental scientific basis. Because of this basis in human visual perception, Munsell's system has outlasted its contemporary color models, and though it has been superseded for some uses by models such as CIELAB (L*a*b*) and CIECAM02, it is still in wide use today.