Full transcript
0:00Today on QUICK ESSENTIALS, I want to show you an odd little thing you need to know about color.
0:04This kinda blew my mind when I first learned about it.
0:07First though, there are 3 different terms we need to be familiar with.
0:10This area of the color picker is where you select your hue.
0:14Hue is just the color name: red, green, blue, etc.
0:17Going horizontally across the color picker is how you select saturation.
0:21Saturation is the amount of chroma, or intensity, of a color.
0:25And going vertically like this will affect value.
0:29Value is how light or dark a color is.
0:31Some color pickers look like this, which is largely the same thing,
0:35although there are some implications we'll look at later in this video.
0:38OK, so a color is always tied to a value.
0:41Even though these are two different hues, with two different levels of saturation,
0:45I think it's pretty easy to see that the top one is lighter, and the bottom one is darker.
0:50And stripping away the saturation, we can easily see where the values of those two colors lie.
0:55And because it's value - not color - that makes a picture readable,
1:00value is one of the most important fundamentals of painting.
1:03No matter what you do with hue and saturation, your decisions there always boil down to value.
1:08Now, it's very tempting to think that hue and saturation are independent of value.
1:13You know, like, value is determined by this vertical placement ...
1:17and then you plug in hue and saturation after.
1:20But that is actually quite far from the truth!
1:22In fact, every single aspect of your color choices cascades down and affects value.
1:28I'll show you an example with saturation first.
1:30Here's a color picker and a canvas.
1:32I'll use this red hue here.
1:34I'll start with a perfectly desaturated version of that, and paint a little swatch.
1:39Now, I want to increase the saturation,
1:41while staying at the same brightness level on the color picker.
1:44So here's another swatch ... change the saturation level ... here's another swatch ...
1:49and repeat this process until the end.
1:51OK, now check this out: I'm going to convert this to black and white.
1:56And the values are different.
1:58Adding saturation decreased value!
2:00Even though, as I sample these, Photoshop is telling me I'm at the same brightness level!
2:05Again, it was a straight line all the way across that color picker.
2:08And that's where this triangular pickers are a little bit more visually accurate.
2:12This is Corel Painter's color picker, by the way.
2:15Its shape implicitly tells us that this value is lighter than this value.
2:19And, remember how Photoshop's brightness was not reflecting our value change?
2:24On this color picker, as I slide through saturation on the same line,
2:27You can see the value slider is now updating.
2:30This is a step forward, although it's still not totally accurate.
2:34I'll show you why in just a second...
2:35but first I want to point out that not all color pickers are made equal!
2:39This is Photoshop's "Coolorus" plugin, which is also a triangular picker.
2:43(And I like this plugin, by the way!)
2:45But here I am doing that same color move...
2:47But on this one the value slider stays locked at 100.
2:50It's almost like different color pickers are measuring different properties.
2:54OK, time to move onto how hue affects value - and THIS is what really blew my mind.
3:00So, there's our example with red, at the top.
3:02And I'm re-doing the process now with this blue color.
3:05And I'm using the same brightness value on this blue as I did on the red.
3:09OK so there's our two swatch panels.
3:12Watch what happens now as I switch this to grayscale.
3:15Your eyes do not deceive you: different colors saturate to different values!
3:21This is a crucial piece in the puzzle of understanding color!
3:24It's also the source of some digital confusion.
3:27Back here in Painter, we've already seen how value does get reduced as I make this move ...
3:31However, the reason it's not entirely accurate is that Painter reduces the value of every hue equally.
3:37As we've just seen, that's not what actually occurs.
3:40In fact, check this out: using this violet color I'll pick a value at 50% on the grayscale.
3:46I'll paint a swatch.
3:48Now I'll move the color picker up to full brightness, but also full saturation.
3:52Paint another swatch, and, are you ready? I'm going to change this to black and white.
3:56That is kinda crazy.
3:58We traveled halfway lighter on the color picker, and got a darker value!
4:03Lighter = darker, dogs 'n cats living together!
4:05Now, this is not true for every color, of course.
4:08This yellow, for instance, does not get very dark when saturated.
4:11I've got my two swatches here, same as with the violet color...
4:14We switch to black and white, and this is more intuitive!
4:18Yup. That's the stuff that blew my mind.
4:20OK, so I've made a chart for you, to act as an overall reference for this.
4:24I've got it on two layers here.
4:26The first layer is simply a chart with all the hues and various degrees of saturation.
4:30And then layer two, of course, is those saturation levels in grayscale.
4:34And this is not every granular hue change, but these, to me, are where the significant changes lie.
4:39You can find the download link in the description.
4:41So, OK, some more digital confusion, I'm afraid...
4:44Let's say this represents a painting I want to check in grayscale.
4:48The absolute wrong way to do it is to use the Hue/Saturation adjustment.
4:52When I strip the saturation here, it just evenly levels everything out,
4:56which is completely inaccurate.
4:58This is Photoshop, but the same thing happens in Krita ...
5:01... in Painter ...
5:03... and in Clip Studio Paint.
5:04So, don't use the Hue/Saturation box to check values.
5:08One reliable way to do it is to simply switch the color space to Grayscale.
5:12But the drawback is, in Grayscale mode, we can't paint in color anymore...
5:16so, I usually don't do it that way.
5:18A quick and dirty way to do it is to make a new layer, fill it with white ...
5:22And set that layer to 'color' mode.
5:24This works across multiple apps, it's pretty reliable,
5:27though I do think the contrast is exaggerated slightly.
5:30My favorite way to check values - and this is exclusive to Photoshop, unfortuantely...
5:35Go up to View -> Proof Setup -> Custom
5:38Then click the dropdown here and set it to 'Dot Gain 20%'
5:42Now you can press CNTRL + Y to toggle between an accurate grayscale view, and color.
5:48And by the way, this stuff happens with real pigments too. It's not just digital!
5:52Here are swatches of these very bright and saturated acrylic pigments.
5:56When I switch this frame to grayscale, we get the same value behavior.
6:00All right, I want to show you how this color theory actually influences my painting.
6:04Here's a spooky little sketch I did in October...
6:07There's a lot of gray-ish colors in it,
6:09So I wanted this area here to have a punch of color.
6:12This is the particular blue that I chose for that.
6:14And that color choice was directly influenced by the fact that that blue gives some of the darker values when saturated.
6:21That way I could have what appears to be a bright, punchy color ...
6:24But, when converted to grayscale, it's a sufficiently dark value.
6:28Which I'm hoping helps pop the lighter values on the focal point next to it.
6:32On the opposite end of the scale...
6:34I wanted to have bright colors that would NOT turn into dark values.
6:39So my palette choice consisted largely of these colors,
6:42which tend to hold onto their light values when saturated.
6:45This color theory is always in the back of my mind when I paint.
6:49At this point you might ask, "Why does this happen? I mean, scientifically?"
6:53Well ... I don't know.
6:55But I suspect it might have something to do with the wavelengths of color.
6:58You've probably heard this acronym: ROY G BIV
7:01These are descending measurements of the wavelength each color occupies.
7:05The wavelengths roughly line up with the value chart ... but it's not perfect.
7:09For example, red is not the lightest value when saturated.
7:12So ... I don't know.
7:13Maybe it's a good question for Captain Disillusion.
7:16He's got a knack for explaining this stuff!
7:18...if only he knew about this channel...
7:21...I dunno ... is that too far fetched? *crowd gasp*
7:23Anyway, I hope this has been an eye opener!
7:26Also, I have lots of longer classes where I apply color theory, and show my process from start to finish!
7:32Talk about painting fundamentals, and how to apply them to your work ...
7:35and lots more.
7:36You can find all that at www.marcobucciartstore.com
7:39That about wraps it up! I'll see you in the next video!