HSV Colour Space

A description of colours in terms of their Hue, Saturation and Value (or Brightness). Because this better matches to the way the human eye works it is a better choice when defining colours for diagrams. For example if you know that there are 10 main "themes" to be depicted then why not assign 10 evenly spaced hues to the themes. Individual items within these themes could be given distinctive values for saturation and value, that way users are able to associate different tones with consistent concepts.

Of course whenever tying concepts to colours it is important to realise that about one in eight Caucasian men is colour-blind. If your material is to be widely understood it is important to ensure that other visual cues are also incorporated and your material is tested on at least one colour blind person.

Most computer software works in the RGB Colour Space, this means that any HSV values have to be converted.

Links to this page

The following pages link to here: Classification, Diagram, RGB Colour Space