3/17/2016

What is color?
• Color can be broadly defined as the effect on the brain of an
observer when an object is viewed in the presence of a light
source.

Colour Theory

March 17/2016
Addis Ababa

How do we perceive color?

• A material looks colored to the human eye when it absorbs light • When white light falls on the substrate, a part of the light is
in the visible wavelength range of 400-700 nm absorbed and the remaining part reflected. The light reflected
and absorbed are said to be complimentary to each other.
• For e.g., a red colored substance absorbs at around 490-500
1.Gamma radiation nm (absorbed spectral colour is blue-green) and the reflected
2.X-ray radiation spectral colour is red what we perceive. Hence, blue-green and
3.Ultraviolet radiation red are called complimentary colours.
4.Visible radiation
5.Infrared radiation • If all the light rays are absorbed, then we perceive black and
6.Terahertz radiation when all part of the light is reflected, then we see white.
7.Microwave radiation
8.Radio waves

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Range of Absorbed spectral Reflected Primary, Secondary, and Intermediate

wavelengths in nm colour complimentary
colour Colors
400-435 Violet Yellow-green
• Red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors
435-480 Blue Yellow
480-490 Green-blue Orange • Green, orange, and violet are the secondary colors
490-500 Blue-green Red – Green is the middle mix of blue and yellow.
500-560 Green Purple – Orange is the middle mix of red and yellow.
560-580 Yellow-green Violet – Violet is the middle mix of blue and red.
580-595 Yellow Blue • Yellow-orange, red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet, blue-green,
595-605 Orange Green-blue and yellow-green are intermediate colors. They are the
605-700 Red Blue-green midpoints between the primary and secondary hues.

Complementary Colors Describing colors

• Hue: the name of the color: red, orange, yellow, green,
• Complementary colors are hues that are opposite one another blue, or violet
• The basic complementary pairs
– Red and green
– Yellow and violet
– Blue and orange

• Color Names. Color names are not absolute. Every

color belongs to a enormous family of related hues.

• A color is called by the name of its most obvious, or

dominant, hue.

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Describing colors Describing colors

• Saturation or chroma: the hue-intensity or brilliance of a • Tints and Shades: A tint is a hue that has been made lighter. A
sample, its dullness or vividness shade is a hue has been made darker.
• A saturated color is a hue in its strongest possible
manifestation.
• The reddest red imaginable, or the bluest blue, are saturated
colors.
• Saturated colors are also called pure colors or full colors. They
are at maximum chroma.
• Brilliant colors have a high level of saturation.
• Muted (dull) colors are at a low level of saturation.

How the colour is imparted in

Describing colors
leather processing?
• Luminance / Value: A measure of the amount of light • A dye is a coloured substance that imparts its own colour
reflected from a hue. Those hues with a high content of to the substrate with which it is chemically treated with.
white have a higher luminance or value. • In contrast, the pigments, another class of colorants used
in leather industry in finishing impart colour to the
substrate not by chemical reactions but by
superimposition and the colouration is restricted to the
surface alone but with dyes we get diffusion (penetration)
into the fibre matrix as well.
• Value Scale: A value scale moves from dark to light.

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Chromophore and auxochromes Chromophore and auxochromes

• The molecules of most colored organic compounds • The intensity of colour can be increased in a dye molecule
contain two parts: by addition of substituent's containing lone pairs of
– a single aryl (aromatic) ring such as benzene or a electrons to the aryl ring such as:
benzene ring with a substituent. Alternatively there
may be a fused ring system such a naphthalene (two
rings fused together) or anthracene (three rings fused • These groups are known as auxochromes
together).

– an extensive conjugated double bond system

containing unsaturated groups, known as
chromophores, such as:

What happens when light is absorbed by

Chromophore and auxochromes
molecules?
• When light passes through the compound, energy from the
naphthalene, a colorless compound light is used to promote an electron from a bonding or non-
bonding orbital into one of the empty anti-bonding orbitals.

1-naphthol which is also a colorless

compound

2,4-dinitronaphthalene. The addition of this

chromophore has caused it to become pale yellow.

we get the deep yellow dye, martius yellow.

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What happens when light is absorbed by What happens when light is absorbed by
molecules? molecules?
• The possible electron jumps that light might cause are: • The important jumps are:
– from pi bonding orbitals to pi anti-bonding orbitals;
– from non-bonding orbitals to pi anti-bonding orbitals;
– from non-bonding orbitals to sigma anti-bonding orbitals

The jumps shown with grey dotted

arrows absorb UV light of wavelength
less that 200 nm.

Remember that bigger jumps need more

energy and so absorb light with a
shorter wavelength.

That means that in order to absorb light in the region from 200 - 800 nm
(which is where the spectra are measured), the molecule must contain
either pi bonds or atoms with non-bonding orbitals. Remember that a
non-bonding orbital is a lone pair on, say, oxygen, nitrogen or a halogen.

examples
• buta-1,3-diene, CH2=CH-CH=CH2 • Ethanal, CH₃CHO, has pi electrons as a part of the double bond,
but also has lone pairs on the oxygen atom.
• There are no non-bonding electrons. That means that the only
• You can get an electron excited from a pi bonding to a pi anti-
electron jumps taking place are from pi bonding to pi anti- bonding orbital, or you can get one excited from an oxygen
bonding orbitals. lone pair (a non-bonding orbital) into a pi anti-bonding orbital.
• You will see that absorption peaks at a value of 217 nm.

• Ethanal can therefore absorb light of two different wavelengths:

– the pi bonding to pi anti-bonding absorption peaks at 180
nm;
– the non-bonding to pi anti-bonding absorption peaks at 290
nm.

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• Consider these three molecules: • the absorptions move to longer and longer wavelengths as the
amount of delocalization in the molecule increases.
• Therefore there must be less energy gap between the bonding
and anti-bonding orbitals as the amount of delocalization
• the later two have conjugated double bonds. In these cases, increases.
there is delocalization of the pi bonding orbitals over the whole
molecule.

wavelength of maximum
molecule
absorption (nm)

ethene 171

buta-1,3-diene 217

hexa-1,3,5-triene 258

• Beta-carotene has 11 carbon-carbon double bonds conjugated

together.

Beta-carotene absorbs particularly strongly in the visible region

between about 400 and 500 nm with a peak about 470 nm.