Colour Order Systems
Colour Order Systems
Colour Order Systems
A K Roy Choudhury
College of Textile Technology, Serampore, Hooghly (W.B.), 712201, India
(OSA-UCS System) Hu
e
Natural Colour System (NCS)
Ostwald system 10P (89) 8 10RP (01)
Atlas 2541, the Chevreul system, Colorcurve, the 10BG (57) 10Y (31)
Eurocolour System, the Acoat System and the Pope Colour
System [20]. Most of the above systems are defined by a 10G (49) 2 10GY (41)
Figure 3 NCS constant hue triangle and hue circle. Colours are Ostwald system
scaled according to their degree of resemblance to the six elementary
colours white, black, yellow, red, blue and green. Hue is resemblance
The German chemist Ostwald devised this colour order
to the nearest chromatic elementary colour (e.g. Y30R indicates 30% system in 191516 [44,45]. Although the various physical
resemblance to red and 70% to yellow), chromaticness is the models are no longer available, the system is favoured by
resemblance to the colour of the same hue of maximum possible
artists and designers because of the similarity between its
chromatic content and blackness or whiteness is the resemblance of
the colour to the perfect black or white. The sum of these must be construction and an artists method of preparation of
100%. colour mix.
Figure 4 shows a constant-hue page of the Ostwald
system. Ostwald defined all colours as mixture of full
colour, white and black. The runs of colour are straight,
White
symmetrically arranged and the end-point colours easily
Full colour with recognisable. An Ostwald solid, constructed of equilateral
a
increasing white
ca triangles, is much simpler in structure than the Munsell
c ea Series with same
ga white content
solid.
e gc ia
ge la
Full
g na
Full DIN system
pa
colour
i pc
colour The DIN system [46] was developed by Richter. The work
li pe started in 1938 and the first edition (196062) contained
l ni pg 600 samples; a glossy edition with 1000 samples were
pi Series with same
n pl black content released in 197883. A number of compromises were made
Full colour with pn to keep a simple relation between DIN and CIE
increasing black p
coordinates. The equality of visual spacing is maintained
Black locally and not globally in all three dimensions.
The system defines three scales:
Figure 4 A constant hue page of the Ostwald system. All colours are 1. Darkness degree, designated D, is the relative lightness
defined as a mixture of full colour, white and black
scale with respect to optimal colour of the same
chromaticity. This is calculated as follows:
Eurocolour system
coloured samples. The system is similar to the Ostwald This system exhibits planes of constant CIELAB hue angle
system, but regular triangular arrays are based on equal on which CIELAB chroma is variable. An atlas has been
visual spacing, rather than on colour mixing. However, the published by Schwabenmuster in Germany [57].
number of constant hue planes (60) is greater than in
Ostwalds original system or the Colour Harmony Manual Acoat system
(24) [16]. This system consists of a cylindrical space with hue and
lightness coordinates and the third coordinate, chromatic
Coloroid system content but does not distinguish saturation or chromatic-
The Coloroid colour system [50,51] is of Hungarian origin. ness [58]. An atlas based on the system has been published
It was designed by Nemcsics and co-workers particularly by Sikkens in the Netherlands.
for use by architects. The system aims to space colours
evenly in terms of their aesthetic effects rather than colour
differences, as in the Munsell system, or perceptual COMPARISON OF COLOUR ORDER
content, as in the NCS system. The equality of spacing is SYSTEMS
considered to produce evenness of appearance in all scales The most common concept across all colour order systems
of colours in the system. is the representation of human visual perception of
The system represents colours by three numbers hue colours.
(A), saturation (T) and lightness (V). There are 48 basic hues Smith and co-workers [59] have compared different
which have constant dominant or complementary colour scales, taking the OSA-UCS as benchmark and
dominant wavelength and are numbered between 10 and mapping OSA-UCS atlas samples onto other colour spaces
76 (with some missing numbers). Intermediate hues are to check the perceptual spacing of the respective colour
represented by decimal fractions. The extreme reds and atlases. They observed that the NCS system is the most
violets, beyond dominant wavelengths 625 and 450 nm radically different in hue spacing from the OSA-UCS
respectively, are omitted from the system. Both the system. OSA chroma, Munsell chroma and NCS
saturation and the lightness are represented on a scale of 1 chromaticness have similar but non-identical axes, while
100. Saturation is defined as the percent spectral colour (or OSA chroma, DIN saturation and Coloroid saturation are
the nonspectral purple) required in an additive mixture distinctly different from each other. The NCS, DIN and
with perfect black and perfect white to match the colour. Coloroid achromatic scales are distinctly different from the
A linear relation exists between excitation purity and OSA-UCS lightness scale, and the Munsell and OSA-UCS
Coloroid saturation. The relation between CIE Y and Color- spaces are closer.
oid lightness is the same as that reported by Hunter [52]: Judd and Nickerson [60] derived idealised relations
V = 10 Y1/2 (5) between the NCS and Munsell systems. Billmeyer and
Bencuya [61] found a simple relation between NCS hue,
NCS chromaticness and NCS blackness against Munsell
Chevreul colour order system hue, Munsell chroma and Munsell value respectively.
This is an old, but less well-known colour order system However no analytical relation could be written, possibly
[53] based on a 3-dimensional colour space in the form of a due to incompatibility of their respective aim-points. It is
hemisphere, the base of which is formed from 12 pure claimed that a colour notation conversion programme for
colour chromatic circles. conversion between the Munsell, OSA-UCS, NCS, DIN,
Coloroid and CIE systems has been developed [62].
Colorcurve Smith and Billmeyer [63] compared the attributes of
This, the newest colour order system [54], is based on different colour order systems and their findings can be
additive mixing of tristimulus values in the CIE 1964 space summarised as follows.