Color is all around us, influencing moods, decisions, and expressions of art, but what most people do not know is that there is a unique distinction between color in the physical world and color on the screen. The following dives into the world of reflected and projected color as well as how color is represented in digital images.
Reflected color is what we see in the physical world, more specifically, the colors we see when light interacts with the objects around us. If you wish to think of an example of this, think about a vibrant colored wall in your home, for example, a blue wall. The blues you see on that wall is due to pigments in the paint reacting to and absorbing the light that has reflected onto it. This absorption reflects back to us in a vibrant form, such as sunset light coming in through a window and hitting a blue wall with lights of orange and red, creating a stunning new color that most people tend to admire.
Projected color is the opposite as this type of color is the lights that are emitted from a screen. This type of color mixing involves combining red, green, and blue RGB light and when they are fully mixed, they produce a white light. Think of when you are watching a movie in a dark room on your TV or laptop, and when the screen is on, the light emitted back to us is normally a brighter white color, and even sometimes a blue depending on what it is on the screen that you are viewing.
Now, when it comes to digital images, color representation can vary, but the two most common formats of it are indexed and 24 bit color. Indexed color using a limited palette of 256 colors in order to save space in image files. This is particularly useful for images that don’t typically require a full spectrum of colors, such as simple graphics or animations, such as a GIF image. In a GIF image, each pixel points to a number in a color palette, allowing for the image to be efficiently stored without compromising the overall look of the image. 24 bit color, or true color, allows for an astonishing over 16 million color combinations. Each pixel in 24 bit color is represented by 8 bits for each red, green, and blue. With 24 bit color, stunningly detailed images can be achieved, such as a JPEG image. JPEG images typically use the 24 bit color format as it gives lifelike colors and gradients to enhance the viewing quality of the image.