This article needs additional citations for verification .(May 2023) |
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings.
The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. However, there are exceptions to this rule, including black-and-white fine art photography, as well as many film motion pictures and art film(s).
Early photographs in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries were often developed in black and white, as an alternative to sepia due to limitations in film available at the time. Black and white was also prevalent in early television broadcasts, which were displayed by changing the intensity of monochrome phosphurs on the inside of the screen, before the introduction of colour from the 1950s onwards.
Black and white continues to be used in certain sections of the modern arts field, either stylistically or to invoke the perception of a historic work or setting.
Since the late 1960s, few mainstream films have been shot in black-and-white. The reasons are frequently commercial, as it is difficult to sell a film for television broadcasting if the film is not in color. 1961 was the last year in which the majority of Hollywood films were released in black and white. [1]
In computing terminology, black-and-white is sometimes used to refer to a binary image consisting solely of pure black pixels and pure white ones; what would normally be called a black-and-white image, that is, an image containing shades of gray, is referred to in this context as grayscale. [2]
Color or colour is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though color is not an inherent property of matter, color perception is related to an object's light absorption, reflection, emission spectra, and interference. For most humans, colors are perceived in the visible light spectrum with three types of cone cells (trichromacy). Other animals may have a different number of cone cell types or have eyes sensitive to different wavelengths, such as bees that can distinguish ultraviolet, and thus have a different color sensitivity range. Animal perception of color originates from different light wavelength or spectral sensitivity in cone cell types, which is then processed by the brain.
Cyan is the color between blue and green on the visible spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a predominant wavelength between 500 and 520 nm, between the wavelengths of green and blue.
Color temperature is a parameter describing the color of a visible light source by comparing it to the color of light emitted by an idealized opaque, non-reflective body. The temperature of the ideal emitter that matches the color most closely is defined as the color temperature of the original visible light source. The color temperature scale describes only the color of light emitted by a light source, which may actually be at a different temperature.
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed in many fields of science, manufacturing, and business, as well as its more direct uses for art, film and video production, recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication. A person who makes photographs is called a photographer.
The CMYK color model is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation CMYK refers to the four ink plates used: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black).
Cinematography is the art of motion picture photography.
A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white. In physics, monochromatic light refers to electromagnetic radiation that contains a narrow band of wavelengths, which is a distinct concept.
Color photography is photography that uses media capable of capturing and reproducing colors. By contrast, black-and-white or gray-monochrome photography records only a single channel of luminance (brightness) and uses media capable only of showing shades of gray.
In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a grayscale image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample representing only an amount of light; that is, it carries only intensity information. Grayscale images, a kind of black-and-white or gray monochrome, are composed exclusively of shades of gray. The contrast ranges from black at the weakest intensity to white at the strongest.
Grey or gray is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning that it has no chroma and therefore no hue. It is the color of a cloud-covered sky, of ash, and of lead.
The Indian-head test pattern is a test card that gained widespread adoption during the black-and-white television broadcasting era as an aid in the calibration of television equipment. It features a drawing of a Native American wearing a headdress surrounded by numerous graphic elements designed to test different aspects of broadcast display. The card was created by RCA to be the standard image for their TK-1 monoscope, a simple video camera capable of producing only the image embedded within it. The pattern was introduced in 1939 and over the following two decades became a fixture of television broadcast across North America in 525-line resolution and abroad in 525- and 625-line resolution until it was obsoleted by the rise of color television in the 1960s.
A color solid is the three-dimensional representation of a color space or model and can be thought as an analog of, for example, the one-dimensional color wheel, which depicts the variable of hue ; or the 2D chromaticity diagram, which depicts the variables of hue and spectral purity. The added spatial dimension allows a color solid to depict the three dimensions of color: lightness, hue, and colorfulness, allowing the solid to depict all conceivable colors in an organized three-dimensional structure.
In color theory, a tint is a mixture of a color with white, which increases lightness, while a shade is a mixture with black, which increases darkness. Both processes affect the resulting color mixture's relative saturation. A tone is produced either by mixing a color with gray, or by both tinting and shading. Mixing a color with any neutral color reduces the chroma, or colorfulness, while the hue remains unchanged.
Black-and-gray is a style of tattooing that uses only black ink in varying shades. This tattooing style is thought to have originated from prisons in the 1970s and 1980s and was later popularized in tattoo parlors.
Monochrome photography is photography where each position on an image can record and show a different amount of light, but not a different hue. It includes all forms of black-and-white photography, which produce images containing shades of neutral grey ranging from black to white. Other hues besides grey, such as sepia, cyan, blue, or brown can also be used in monochrome photography. In the contemporary world, monochrome photography is mostly used for artistic purposes and certain technical imaging applications, rather than for visually accurate reproduction of scenes.
Blend modes in digital image editing and computer graphics are used to determine how two layers are blended with each other. The default blend mode in most applications is simply to obscure the lower layer by covering it with whatever is present in the top layer ; because each pixel has numerical values, there also are many other ways to blend two layers.
Shades of white are colors that differ only slightly from pure white. Variations of white include what are commonly termed off-white colors, which may be considered part of a neutral color scheme.
Variations of gray or grey include achromatic grayscale shades, which lie exactly between white and black, and nearby colors with low colorfulness. A selection of a number of these various colors is shown below.
This article provides introductory information about the RGB, HSV, and HSL color models from a computer graphics perspective. An introduction to colors is also provided to support the main discussion.
Shades of black, or off-black colors, are colors that differ only slightly from pure black. These colors have a low lightness. From a photometric point of view, a color which differs slightly from black always has low relative luminance. Colors often considered "shades of black" include onyx, black olive, charcoal, and jet.