Seeing is NOT Believing:

Visual and Color Magic

Foothill Technology High School

What do you see?Anyone see a face?

Now tilt your head to the right.Our brains immediately want to create order and understanding. Changing your perspective, can allow for the brain to see multiple images.

Stare at the center dot and move your head forwards and

backwards

Properties of Color: Hue• Hue refers to the

name of the color. Red, orange, green, and purple are hues.

• Hue can be varied to create many colors. Pink, rose, scarlet, maroon, and crimson are all colors, but the hue in each case is red.

Primary Colors: Red, yellow and blue make up the three Primary Colors.

The Three Secondary Colors are mixtures of two primaries: Red and yellow make orange; yellow and blue make green; blue and red make violet.

The six Tertiary colors are mixtures of a primary and an adjacent secondary. Blue and green make blue-green, red and violet make red-violet.

Color Wheel

Properties of Color: Value

• The second property of color is Value. Value refers to the lightness or darkness of the hue. Adding white lightens a color and produces a tint, or high-value color. Adding black darkens the color, resulting in a shade, or low-value color.

Primary/Secondary/TertiaryPrimary Colors: • Red• Blue • Yellow

Tertiary Colors: (Primary and Secondary Mixed)• Red-Violet• Red-Orange• Blue –Violet• Yellow-Green• Yellow-Orange• Blue-Green

Secondary Colors (Two Primaries Mixed)• Green• Orange• Violet

Properties of Color: Intensity & Complementary Colors

• The third property of color is intensity, which refers to the brightness of a color.

• Intensity is also known as saturation.

• There is a relationship between value and intensity. Mixing in black or white changes the color’s value and intensity.

Two ways to lower intensity are by mixing gray with the color, or by mixing a color with its complement, the color directly across from it on the color wheel.

Complementary Colors

Mixing complementary colors neutralizes them, but when complementary colors are placed next to each other, they intensify each other’s brightness. Please observe the example.

Complementary Color: Afterimage Effect

• A phenomenon of complementary color is the afterimage effect. Stare at an area of intense color for a minute or so and then look at a neutral color. The complement color will seem to appear. Please see the example on the next slide for an example. Stare at the dot on the top image for a minute, then look at the dot on the bottom image.

The next slide will have a square with four different colors. Stare at the black dot in the center without moving your eyes for at least 30 seconds. The slide after that will be a slide identical to the one you see here.

Stare at the black dot.

What Colors Do You See?

Why do I see an “After-image?”

Similar to someone putting on sunglasses in order to see in the bright sun; eyes adjust to color by reducing the brightness, or luminosity of the color

The eyes reduce luminosity by counteracting, or balancing the color by using the opposite of the color you are viewing. Opposite color refers to opposite on the Color Wheel

Reading becomes difficult when the

colors you are viewing are of the same

Luminosity.

What Causes Color to Look Different?

• A color may look different because of the surrounding colors.

• A color may look different depending on the color of light used to view it; florescent light, incandescent(light bulbs) and daylight are all different colors.

Are The Center Squares the Same Color?

Yes!

Surrounding colors cont.

• All the center colors are the same, but change because of the surrounding colors.

How Many Different Colors?

• There are only two different colors in the picture. Green and magenta.

• The surrounding color cause the colors to appear darker or lighter.

Contrast

The saturation of a color can be visually altered by the surrounding color. The yellow square is the same in all three squares.

Color and Depth

• Color can cause visual tricks by creating a sense of depth depending on the shade of the background color.

• Light colors on dark backgrounds appear to recede, dark colors appear to protrude from their background.

• Flash Contrast Demo

Dark spots appear to project outward, light spots appear to recede inward.

The Power of Color

• The Power of Color Flash link