Home › Forums › The Learning Center › Color Theory and Mixing › Difference between tone and value?
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August 28, 2019 at 8:24 pm #477444
I understand a value scale (light to dark), is tone the same thing? I
Thank you for helping me figure this outAugust 28, 2019 at 10:17 pm #872898According to William Powell in his book 500 color recipes, Value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color or a tone, so they are basically the same.
My apologies if this sounds like an ad.
August 28, 2019 at 11:54 pm #872899My understanding is
Tint is when you add white to a Hue
Tone is when you add grey to a Hue
Shade is when you add black to a Hue.http://s3.amazonaws.com/wetcanvas-hdc/Community/images/18-Sep-2019/1999899-sigsmall.jpg
STUDIOBONGOAugust 29, 2019 at 2:55 am #872900While not a Munsell term, if you think of a Munsell hue-page “tone” is from high-chroma on the right to low-chroma (Gray) at the left reading-horizontally. Where-as tint is a diagonal towards White and shade is a diagonal towards Black.
Conversationally, a “range of tones” can be just low-chroma grays on the leftmost portion of a Munsel hue-page read-vertically though it’s really a range of values of Gray or near-Grays. A tonal study has value changes, but little to no hue or chroma change …even though it may not be just a near-Gray. (Monochromatic)
A “range of values” though can represent any chroma including very high-chromas.
Tints of Gray would be Gray towards White.
Shades of Gray would be Grays towards Black.Radical Fundemunsellist
August 30, 2019 at 7:16 pm #872895The answers so far reflect two distinct senses in which the word “tone” is used by artists.
In one of these senses “tone”, like “lightness” and “value”, refers to the scale between black and white through various greys. If there’s a difference it’s that lightness and Munsell value increase from black to white, while “tone” and also “tonal value” scales are often represented as increasing from white to black.
In the other sense, “a tone” as opposed to a tint or a shade, is a colour perceived to contain black, white and coloured components.
Colour Online (hundreds of links on colour): https://sites.google.com/site/djcbriggs/colour-online
The Dimensions of Colour: www.huevaluechroma.com
Colour Society of Australia: www.coloursociety.org.auAugust 30, 2019 at 8:51 pm #872901It’s like the word “hue” has two entirely different usages, well two-and-one half really;
1. Hue as in a replacement pigment in marketing; cadmium red hue.
2. Hue as in hue-value-chroma or hue-saturation-value. And more loosely hue as another word for “color”.
Radical Fundemunsellist
August 31, 2019 at 10:40 pm #872891Anonymousa value scale (light to dark), is tone the same thing?
not it is not, a value scale is a specific and distinct concept.
Tone is a nebulous term and nebulous means hazy, uncertain, indefinite, etc.
You can use the word in many ways
“I love the tone of that brickwork” (hue, value, and intensity)
“those desert tones are warm and soothing” (colors, hues)
“that bright loud color needs to be toned down” (intensity)
“Tone your canvas before starting your painting” (color, hue)
“the overall tone of that painting is very high key” (values)
so it covers hue, value, and intensity, it is a full service word that
is used in more than just two ways.September 4, 2019 at 11:02 am #872886not it is not, a value scale is a specific and distinct concept.
Tone is a nebulous term and nebulous means hazy, uncertain, indefinite, etc.
You can use the word in many ways
“I love the tone of that brickwork” (hue, value, and intensity)
“those desert tones are warm and soothing” (colors, hues)
“that bright loud color needs to be toned down” (intensity)
“Tone your canvas before starting your painting” (color, hue)
“the overall tone of that painting is very high key” (values)
so it covers hue, value, and intensity, it is a full service word that
is used in more than just two ways.You are absolutely correct! There are so many descriptive words that are used to describe the appearance of color, and many of them are used incorrectly to mean something else.
There are only 3 “attributes”, or “dimensions” of color, and those are Hue, Value, and Chroma. All the other descriptive terms, or phrases have to fit into one of these categories, in order for it to describe the color accurately. (Just ask the Munsell enthusiasts!):lol:
Some of those “descriptive terms” that are often used, but are generally mis-used are as follows:
Tint, Shade, Intensity, Luminance, Lightness, Brightness, Dullness, Grayness, Tone, Warm, Cool, Purity, Strength. These can all be categorized under the three scientific attributes of color, Hue, Value, and Chroma, in order to be truly meaningful in their descriptions. The only term that probably can’t be categorized under one of these attributes, is the concept of “Warm”, and “Cool”, primarily because those are comparative assessments, and each requires more than one color in order to make such a comparison.
wfmartin. My Blog "Creative Realism"...
https://williamfmartin.blogspot.comSeptember 4, 2019 at 12:03 pm #872902It gets worse;
– There’s the 10 Munsell “hues”.
– There’s the “hue angle” used in HSV/HSL Color definitions commonly used in digital and art contexts, and found on most color pickers. (Red at 0′, Yellow at 60′)
– Adding to the confusion there’s the “hue angle” used in CIELAB/CIECAM Color definitions used by color scientists and found on many color-wheels like Quillers and Bruce MacEvoy’s Handprint site. (Magenta at 0″, it Red at 30″ and Yellow at 90′). . . Arrgh!
Radical Fundemunsellist
September 4, 2019 at 10:24 pm #872896There are only 3 “attributes”, or “dimensions” of color, and those are Hue, Value, and Chroma. All the other descriptive terms, or phrases have to fit into one of these categories, in order for it to describe the color accurately. (Just ask the Munsell enthusiasts!):lol:
Different terms are used for psychophysical (measureable) parameters vs attributes of perceived colour, for example luminance vs brightness: two squares recording the same luminance may exhibit different brightness on different backgrounds. For perceived colours some different terms are needed for colours of lights and colours of objects, for example brightness of light is open ended whereas lightness of objects relates to the scale between black and white. For different purposes the three-dimensional range of object colours can be mapped out in different ways in addition to hue, lightness and chroma. This sort of information is available in many modern texts but none more beautiful or authoritative than Kuehni and Schwarz’s Color Ordered (2008).
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=2vfOyOrRdvAC
https://www.amazon.com/Color-Ordered-Systems-Antiquity-Present/dp/019518968XColour Online (hundreds of links on colour): https://sites.google.com/site/djcbriggs/colour-online
The Dimensions of Colour: www.huevaluechroma.com
Colour Society of Australia: www.coloursociety.org.auJanuary 7, 2020 at 11:38 pm #872894Obviously, there is a LOT of confusion about what color terms mean !
One word can be used in multiple different ways.“Medium/ Media” for example.
Can this ever be remedied?
We need a dictator….a respected central authority to lay down the law once and for all.
Until then, talking about art, which is already difficult enough, will continue to be like communicating on the Tower of Babel !January 17, 2020 at 6:56 am #872897…a respected central authority to lay down the law once and for all.
In colour science and technology there is the CIE who laid the foundations of the science of colorimetry beginning in the early 20th century and defined all the device-independent colour spaces used in colour management, as well as much else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Commission_on_IlluminationThey publish an online vocabulary of 1400+ terms that’s by far the most authoritative source of definitions for colour science and technology, but there are many terms used by artists that aren’t covered.
http://eilv.cie.co.at/Colour Online (hundreds of links on colour): https://sites.google.com/site/djcbriggs/colour-online
The Dimensions of Colour: www.huevaluechroma.com
Colour Society of Australia: www.coloursociety.org.auJanuary 21, 2020 at 10:48 am #872887Different terms are used for psychophysical (measureable) parameters vs attributes of perceived colour, for example luminance vs brightness: [B]two squares recording the same luminance may exhibit different brightness on different backgrounds.[/B]
That is not a very scientific way to measure the attributes of a color, primarily because it depends upon a “perceived color”, that is dependent upon the visual effect created by the surrounding colors.
An appropriate measurement of color deals with only the color in question, and not any sort of “effect” that may be created, visually, by the surrounding area.
wfmartin. My Blog "Creative Realism"...
https://williamfmartin.blogspot.comJanuary 23, 2020 at 2:53 pm #872885That is not a very scientific way to measure the attributes of a color, primarily because it depends upon a “perceived color”, that is dependent upon the visual effect created by the surrounding colors.
An appropriate measurement of color deals with only the color in question, and not any sort of “effect” that may be created, visually, by the surrounding area.
By your criteria here, value would not be a very ‘scientific’ or objective attribute for describing the lightness dimension of color, because human perception is involved.
February 2, 2020 at 11:59 am #872888An accurate color measuring instrument puts it all on one plane, irrespective of that which the human eye may perceive, and that data can be plotted, or published as real numbers.
wfmartin. My Blog "Creative Realism"...
https://williamfmartin.blogspot.com -
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