User:Brian/Colour
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Color (disambiguation).
Color or colour is the perception of the frequency (or wavelength) of light, and can be compared to how pitch (or a musical note) is the perception of the frequency or wavelength of sound.
It is a perception which in humans derives from the ability of the fine structures of the eye to distinguish (usually three) differently filtered analyses of a view. The perception of colour is influenced by biology (some people are born seeing colours differently or not at all; see colour blindness), long-term history of the observer, and also by short-term effects such as the colours nearby. (This is the basis of many optical illusions.)
The science of colour is sometimes called chromatics. It includes the perception of colour by the human eye, the origin of colour in materials, colour theory in art, and the physics of colour in the electromagnetic spectrum.