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Complementary colour

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Complementary colour is a technical term for the 'opposite' colour, or the colour of greatest colour contrast.

This is intuitively perceived by most people, but, on a colour wheel, the colour is exactly the opposite colour, being rotated by 180˚ on the wheel.

colourwheel.jpg

Although the colour wheel is a useful visual aid, its controls are more easily accessed as Hue-Saturation-Brightness (or Lightness), or HSB, where hue is rotation on the colour wheel, and saturation is distance from the centre, and brightness is a value from 0 to 255 which does not appear on the colour wheel, but is essential for defining a colour exactly.

In Adobe Photoshop, new colours can be defined using HSB, and the Hue-Saturation dialog enables colour to be adjusted using the HSB model, although a colour wheel is not presented.

Using HSB, complementary colour requires a change to Hue of 180˚

In addition the ordinary complementary colour, there are other schemes which also rely on the colour wheel

Split Complementary: -150˚ and +150˚ Triad colour scheme: -120˚ and + 120˚ Analogous Colour: -30˚ and +30˚ Monochromatic scheme: Hue stays the same, saturation changes

Artistic vs Scientific

There are actually two kinds of colour wheels in common use, and they produce different results. Traditionally, artists created their own colour wheels, using artist pigments. The colour rotations in computer software using HSB are based on true 'scientific' colour models.

Which should you use?

Essentially, there is nothing special about complementary colour if it doesn't work optically in your image. Starting with a complementary colour is a short cut to a particular look - but after you've taken the short cut, use your eyes to determine what really is the best.

If I want to use artistic complementary colour, is their software that does this?

Art Director's Toolkit for the Mac and ColorExpert for the iPhone offer artistic as a choice. Painter's Picker for the Mac offers artistic as a choice.

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  • This page was last modified on 6 February 2009, at 15:12.
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