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Old 01-12-2003, 12:16 PM   #3
Michael Georges Michael Georges is offline
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CHROMA

Chroma can be confusing. The easiest expression of Chroma is that it is the amount of gray in a color. By adding gray, you gradually neutralize the hue. Chroma is often also referred to as "intensity".

The key to the Munsell system as it applies to artists is that you use the value scale of grays to neutralize your hues instead of using the color on the opposite end of the color wheel. It is important to realize thereby, that each hue will have a value/chroma scale of its own - Dark Blue at Value 1 to Light Blue at Value 9. To neutralize the chroma or intensity of a value 5 blue, you add to it a value 5 gray. If you added pure black or a lighter or darker gray, then you would contaminate the value and possibly the hue of that value 5 blue.

Munsell has a 14 step sequence of chroma, but I have found it easier to express chroma in three categories - High, Medium, and Low. In artistic terms, the high medium and low categories refer to the amount of (equal value) gray you add to a hue to neutralize it - High=25%, Medium=50%, and Low=75%. The more gray you add to the pure hue, the lower the intensity or chroma of the hue becomes.

You can actually build charts of each hue in values from 1 to 9 and then neutralize each value into high, medium, and low categories.
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