Chapter 7. Color Awareness

48 Color Perception

Give people a piece of paper, ask them to color the sky, and, chances are, they’ll reach for a blue crayon.

Sure, the sky can be blue, except when it’s a deep shade of violet, a bright red, a vibrant green-gold, a pale yellow, a dusty mauve, or any other color of the spectrum. It all depends on external influences like time of day, quality of light, purity of air, and whether or not the viewer is wearing sunglasses.

All kinds of assumptions are made about color: The sky is blue, the sun is yellow, the clouds are white, the dirt is brown, and the trees are green. But what are the real colors of things? How does our perception of these colors change when it is affected by different qualities of light ...

Get Visual Design: Ninety-five things you need to know. Told in Helvetica and dingbats. now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.