Colour Scheme Chooser Instructions

The color wheel used within the free color scheme chooser is based on the yellow-red-blue wheel.

Red, yellow and blue are the primary colors. These three colors are used to mix all others. Yellow-blue makes green. Yellow-red makes orange. Red-blue makes violet.

Yellow, red and blue are considered to be the primary (foundation) colors. Orange green and violet are secondary and The six tertiary colors are made by combining adjoining colors.

This type of wheel is based on pigment based inks but exists in a computer world. This allows us to 'break' some rules and interpret the wheel differently.

The YRG color wheel is based on
the idea of mixing pigments

The RGB color wheel is based on
mixing light emitted colors.

Color Model Differences

It is important to understand that this color model is not the same as the RGB color wheel used in most computer applications like Photoshop.

Differences:

1) The RGB wheel uses red-green-blue as it's primary colors.

2) Colors in RGB are based on the idea of transmitted light. The different colors are made by mixing different frequencies of light.

3) The wheel used in computers places green in the same place where yellow is on the YRB wheel used within the color scheme chooser.

4) RGB can produce 16.8 million colors. In contrast The pigment based color wheel can only produce around 100,000 distinct shades. This is the reason the tool has to convert most RGB colors to the closest match.

Combining colors using the wheel color schemes.

Colors can be chosen based on their position on the color wheel in relation to each other. The free color scheme chooser tool makes this job very easy.

Warm and Cool color

warm cool color One side of the wheel is made up of warm colors, and the other side cool colors. Yellow, orange and Red are warm colors and green, blue and violet are the cool.

Interesting combinations can be achieved by using colors from the opposite side of the wheel. the result is always a warm and cool color. This creates the effect of both colors looking more intense when they are side by side.

3d effects, and an appearance of depth can be achieved using this combination.

This scheme is known as complimentary and is discussed below.

Monochromatic Color Scheme

This scheme uses the same color (hue) but changes the brightness and saturation to achieve different shades and tints.

Analogic Color Scheme

This scheme uses 3 adjacent colors. The base color plus two colors 30º either side. The distance (degrees can be adjusted for different effects)

Analogic and Complimentary Color Scheme

This scheme uses the analogic colors scheme and includes the complimentary color.

Complimentary Color Scheme

This scheme uses colors on the opposite side of the color wheel. The complimentary colors are always warm and cool together. See warm and cool at the top of the page

Split Complimentary Color Scheme

Similar to complimentary but chooses the adjacent colors 30º each way of the compliment.

Double Complimentary Color Scheme

This uses the complimentary color scheme and includes one color 30º back from each.

Triadic Color Scheme

This scheme uses the colors at 120º around the color wheel (360º).