The document discusses color modes, meanings, and schemes. It begins by explaining the importance of understanding color for design. It then covers color modes used in computer programs like RGB, CMYK, and grayscale. Next, it explores the meanings and symbolism associated with different colors like red, green, blue, and discusses warm, cool, and neutral color categories. Finally, it outlines six common color schemes - monochromatic, complementary, split-complementary, double-complementary, triadic, and analogous - and provides examples of each. The document aims to educate designers on properly using color in their work.

1. Presentation by Ravi Bhadauria
ADMEC Multimedia Institute | www.admecindia.co.in
& Schemes of Colors
Modes, Meanings

2. A Workshop by Ravi Bhadauria at ADMEC Multimedia Institute
Know your colors
to make your design beautiful.
& Color Schemes
Color Modes, Meanings

3. Color Modes & Color Schemes
ADMEC MULTIMEDIA INSTITUTE
Leader in Animation & Digital Media Education
ISO 9001 : 2008 CERTIFIED
www.admecindia.co.in | www.graphic-design-institute.com
Phones: +91-9811-8181-22, +91-9911-7823-50
R
A Presentation by: Ravi Bhadauria

4. Preface & Acknowledgment
Dear Reader,
ADMEC Multimedia Institute is a growing institute which provides industry oriented training to
the world at large. Being a multimedia institute we offer training for designing content for the
advertising and publishing on various medias also.
This presentation is the study material of our weekly workshops beining conducted by our
senior mentors on Color Modes & Color Schemes. All the admecians and non-admecians
can access this presentation to improve their knowledge of colors.
We express thanks to many books and websites, specially Google for making it one of the
best presentations of all the time.
Thanks
Ravi Bhadauria, Instructor (Web and Visual Designing)
Director ADMEC Multimedia Institute
http://www.admecindia.co.in

5. What are you going to learn today?
● Importance of color in a design ?
● Introduction to Color Wheel
● Color Modes (Color vs Computer)
● Types of Color Modes
● How they are useful ?
● Meaning of Colors ?
● Color Schemes (Color vs Design)
● Types of Color Schemes
● Use of Color Schemes
● Projects
www.admecindia.co.in

6. What we will be discussing today?
Color is one of the most important of elements of any design
as it can make your break your design if you are not using it
wisely. So, we have devided color topic in 2 parts:
1. Color Modes, Meanings, and Schemes (Today's Topic)
2. How to Use Colors in a Design (Next Week Topic)
www.admecindia.co.in

7. www.admecindia.co.in
Importance of Color
Color is an element of visual language that people
process and notice before they are consciously aware
of it. So, this is the reason why colors are important
to discuss.
Part I

8. Importance of Color in a design

9. Because color is a powerful element of visual
communication, we need to think through how
and why we are using it.
I have given 10 best possible examples of the
use of colors in various situations in our life to
make this point very clear.

10. Uses of Colors in a design
1. Use color to speed visual search
www.admecindia.co.in

11. Uses of Colors in a design
2. Use color to improve object recognition
www.admecindia.co.in

12. Uses of Colors in a design
3. Use color to enhance meaning
www.admecindia.co.in

13. Uses of Colors in a design
4. Use color to convey structure
www.admecindia.co.in

14. Uses of Colors in a design
5. Use color to establish identity
www.admecindia.co.in

15. Uses of Colors in a design
6. Use color for symbolism
www.admecindia.co.in

16. Uses of Colors in a design
7. Use color to improve usability
www.admecindia.co.in

17. Uses of Colors in a design
8. Use color to communicate mood
www.admecindia.co.in

18. Uses of Colors in a design
9. Use color to show associations
www.admecindia.co.in

19. Uses of Colors in a design
10. Use color to express metaphors
www.admecindia.co.in

20. Color fires both cultural and psychological affiliations
that are symbolic of ideas, thoughts and feelings. So as
per the context one color can have positive or negative
connotations for different- 2 frameworks and societies.
For example, although white is often associated with
pleasure and celebration in Western cultures, in
another context it can be associated with despair and
frustration in other culture.
Synopsis

21. Today every designer uses computer to create accurate
designs so we must know how computer considers
colors first. I am sure that knowledge will not help you
directly in understanding the use of colors for your
design to make them engaging and intuitive but that
can't be ignored and then we will discuss about the
color meanings and color schemes in this presentation.
So, what you need to learn to understand
colors very well ?

22. www.admecindia.co.in
Color Modes
Part II

23. www.admecindia.co.in
A color mode determines the color model used to
display and print images. Computer application such as
Photoshop uses its color modes on established models
for describing and reproducing colors.
Common models include HSB (Hue, Saturation,
Brightness), RGB (Red, Green, Blue), CMYK (Cyan,
Magenta, Yellow, Black), and CIE Lab.
In addition to determine the number of colors that can
be displayed in an image, color modes affect the
number of channels and the file size of an image.

24. 1. RGB
2. CMYK
3. Grayscale
4. Lab
5. Indexed
6. Duotone
7. Bitmap
8. Multichannel
Color Modes

25. The RGB color model is an
additive color model in which
red, green, and blue light are
added together in various ways
to reproduce a broad array of
colors. The name of the model
comes from the initials of the
three additive primary colors,
red, green, and blue.
RGB Color Mode

26. Intensity value for each pixels
ranging from 0 – 255 levels.
RGB images use three colors or
channels to produce up to 16.7
million colors on screen.
The 3 channels translate to (8x3)
24 bits of color information
RGB Color Mode cond.. 2
per pixel. It is a primary color mode and also known as
additive color mode as it reproduce white color when we
add all the 3 components at their maximum intensity.

27. The CMYK color model (process
color, four color, secondary
color) is a subtractive color
model, used in color printing,
and is also used to describe the
printing process itself. CMYK
refers to the four inks used in
some color printing: cyan,
magenta, yellow, and key
(black).
CMYK Color Mode

28. RGB and CMYK color modes are
complimentary color modes as
they can reproduce each other in
computer.
Note: Primary and secondary
colors according to manual
definitions are completely
different:
Primary: Red, Yellow, Blue
Secondary: Orange, Green, Purple
Complimentary Color Modes

29. Primary: Red, Yellow, Blue
Secondary: Orange, Green, Purple
Manual Primary and Secondary Colors

30. La*b* Color Mode

31. Bitmap Color Mode
This mode uses one of two color values (black or white) to
represent the pixels in an images. Images in Bitmap mode
are called bitmapped 1-bit images because they have a bit
depth of 1.

32. Grayscale Color Mode

33. Duotone Color Mode
This mode creates duotone (two-color), tritone (three-color),
and quadtone (four-color) grayscale images using two to four
custom inks.
See the example on next slide.

34. Duotone Color Mode Example

35. Indexed Color Mode

36. Multichannel Color Mode

37. www.admecindia.co.in
Color Meanings
You can not use colors perfectly in any design until you are
not aware of their meanings and symbolism that they
represent. Colors can swap thinking and can make
psychological and physiological changes in someone's mind.
Part III

38. www.admecindia.co.in
Colors are the powerful source of symbolism and meanings.
Red is universally followed as powerful and Stop sign in
traffic while green for progress and Go signal in traffic.
I have conducted the presentation on this subject hundreds
of times in many institutions and colleges including in my
own institute i.e. ADMEC Multimedia Institute and every time
I learned new things about colors from my experiences.
Lets explore some useful things about colors.

39. Color meanings
There are 3 type of colors warm, cool, and neutral in the
same way there are 3 types of moods (design personality)
warm, cool, and neutral.
Warm Cool Neutral
I am sure above paragraph has given you some good hints
about the relation between the colors and design personality.

40. Color meanings contd...
Lets explore some useful traits of all these three color
categories in detail on next slide.
Hot traits: (reference blood and fire), Anger, emotions,
conflict, optimism, violence, excitement, action, energy, war,
movement, dynamism, discussion, aggression, romantic,
creative, love, passion etc.
Cool traits: (reference nature) Peace, comfort, nurture,
progress, prosperity, calm, investment, safety, wisdom, cold,
impersonal, antiseptic etc.

41. Color meanings contd...
Neutral traits: To some extent blacks, browns, tans, golds,
and beige are considered warm. While white, ivory, silver, and
gray are somewhat cooler colors.
Simplicity, purity, peace, fat less, experienced, dangerous,
mysterious, sophisticated, formal, rich, glamorous, innocent,
softness, elegance, friendliness, conservative, relaxing etc.

43. Red

44. Use of Red

45. Green

46. Use of Green

47. Blue

48. Purple

49. Use of Purple

50. Use of Purple

51. Orange

52. Use of Orange

53. Use of Orange

54. Use of Orange

55. Use of Orange

56. Use of Orange

57. White

58. Use of White

59. Yellow

60. Use of Yellow

61. Use of Yellow

62. Black

63. Use of Black

64. Use of Black

65. Use of Black

66. Use of Black

67. Use of Black

68. www.admecindia.co.in
Color Schemes
Color schemes are must to know to use colors in
combinations for better contrast and powerful designing.
There are 6 color schemes and after knowing them you will
be able to create harmonious designs quickly.
Part IV

69. How to make a color scheme ?
Color has some symbolism and traits like every brand
available to sell and service something. Meaning every brand
must have a primary color and then we should search for a
color that can accompany it or secondary color and that is
the color scheme.
But which secondary color will work well with the primary
color is a seriously big dilemma.
Lets overcome this dilemma on next slide.

70. Color Wheel

71. Types of Color – analog

72. Types of Color – analog
yellow + orange = yellow-orange
red + orange = red-orange
red + purple (violet) = red-purple (red-violet)
blue + purple (violet) = blue-purple (blue-violet)
blue + green = blue-green
yellow + green = yellow-green

73. Types of Color – digital
Primary
● Red
● Green
● Blue
Secondary
● Cyan
● Magenta
● Yellow
Tertiary
● White
● Black

74. Color schemes contd...
1. Monochromatic Relationship:
Colors that are shade or tint
variations of the same hue.
It uses the variations in lightness
and saturation of single color. This
scheme looks clean and elegant.
It produce a very soothing effect.

75. Monochromatic Example

76. Monochromatic Example

77. Color schemes contd...
2. Complementary Relationship:
Those colors across from each
other on a color wheel.
This color scheme looks best when
you place a warm color against
cool color. This is an intrinsically
high contrast color scheme and
good for youths.

78. Complimentary Example

79. Complimentary Example

80. Complimentary Example

81. Color schemes contd...
3. Split-Complementary
Relationship:
One hue plus two others equally
spaced from its complement. So it is
a new variant of complimentary color
scheme.
This provides high contrast without
the strong tension of complimentary
color scheme.

82. Split-complimentary examples

83. Split-complimentary examples

84. Color schemes contd...
4. Double-Complementary or Tetra-ad Relationship:
Two complementary color sets; the distance between
selected complementary pairs will effect the overall contrast
of the final composition.
This scheme is hard to harmonize;
if all four hues are used in equal
amounts, the scheme may look
unbalanced, so you may choose
a color to be dominant or
subdue the colors.

85. Tetra-ad scheme examples

86. Color schemes contd...
5. Triad Relationship:
Three hues equally positioned on a color wheel.
This scheme is very popular among
artists because it offers strong
visual contrast while retaining
harmony and color richness. It is
not as contrast rich as
complimentary scheme, but it
looks more balanced and
harmonious than that.

87. Triad scheme examples

88. Triad scheme examples

89. Triad scheme examples

90. Color schemes contd...
6. Analogous Relationship:
This color scheme uses the color
located adjacent to each other on
a color wheel. One color is used
as a dominant color and others
are used to enrich the scheme. It
is very similar to monochromatic
but with more vibrant colors and
nuances.

91. Analogous scheme examples

92. Analogous scheme examples

93. Projects on Color Modes and Schemes
Theory:
● Why colors are important for a design? Explain with
appropriate examples.
● What are all the color modes in computer please explain
with their respective characteristics and uses?
● Write down all the color schemes with the related image.
Don't forget to add their uses and examples.
● How Complimentary is different from Triadic Color
Scheme? Please explain with example.
● Write down the meanings or indications of at least 20
colors with the most appropriate picture examples.
For reviews and comments please email me at: info@admecindia.co.in

94. Want to read more on visual designing
http://www.graphic-design-institute.com
Helpline 1: +91 9811-8181-22
Helpline 2: +91 9911-7823-50
URL: http://www.admecindia.co.in
R
ADMEC MULTIMEDIA