Understanding Color, 5th Edition

3 THE HUMAN ELEMENT The Sensation of Color / Threshold / Intervals / The Perception of Color / Physiology: Responding to Light / Healing and Color / Synaesthesia / Psychology: Responding to Light / Naming Colors / Color As Language: From Name to Meaning / Impressional Color / Color As Words Alone

Color responses are more tied to mans emotions than to his intellect. In general, people do not respond to color with their minds.

—Deborah Sharpe

Of all the senses that connect us to the world—vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—vision plays by far the largest role. More than 80 percent of our sensory experiences are visual. We are drawn to light, and to color. The instrument used in solving color problems in the design studio is the unaided human eye. For artists and designers, dyers and house painters, printers and carpet sellers, even when aided by tools of color technology, final decisions about color are made by human eyes alone.

The Sensation of Color

The experience of color begins with a sensation. A sensation is an actual, physical event. It is the body's response to a stimulus, something that is encountered from the outside world. Light, which is visible energy, is the stimulus for the sensation of sight. That stimulus is measurable: the color and quantity of light emitted by a light source can be measured. Sensations are also measurable. An individual's ability to detect light is measured as visual acuity, or sharpness of vision. Visual acuity is the ability to sense ...