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Munsell Color System - Munsell Color Wheel

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Munsell Color System - Munsell Color Wheel

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The Munsell color system is build on equal perceptual difference of each color atribute (hue, value, chroma).


Hue - color family or base color

In the Munsell color system the hue circle is divided into 5 main hues (R, Y, G, B, P).
Each of the main hue is further divided forming another 5 main hues (YR, GY, BG, PB, RP). These are visual complementary colors of main hue lying at the opposite side of the hue circle (BG -> R, YR -> B, PB -> Y, GY -> P, RP -> G). This divides hue circle into the 10 hue segments:

R - Red
YR - Yellow Red
Y - Yellow
GY - Green Yellow
G - Green
BG - Blue Green
B - Blue
PB - Purple Blue
P - Purple
RP - Red Purple

And finally each of the 10 hue segments is further divided into 4 smaller steps (2.5, 5.0, 7.5, 10.0) forming 40 hues in total.
The central color of each of 10 main hues are located at step 5.

The hues are percpetual equaly spaced. This means that perceptual difference between two hues with hue difference of 2.5 (e.g. 5R and 2.5R) is equal to the perceptual difference between e.g. 10PB and 2.5P.

Check my Munsell color charts organized by hue: https://laginmiroslav.gumroad.com/l/munsellcolorchartshue

Value - lightness of color

The lightness of color is divided into 10 steps where 0 is pure black and 10 is pure white. As black and white are unchanging and would be the same for each hue they are not included in the charts.

The steps in value scale are perceptually equal. This means that the lightness difference between two colors of value of 5 and 3 (value difference 2) appears the same as the lightness difference between two colors of value of 8 and 6 (value difference 2).

Chroma - intensity of color

Chroma step for each color is also perceptually equal. This means that the chroma difference between two colors of chroma of 12 and 16 (chroma difference 4) will appear the same as the chroma difference between two different colors of chroma of 4 and 8 (chroma difference 4).

Notation

Each color is notated with following logic: "hue" "value"/"chroma".
So, e.g. for hue 2.5R the maximum chromatic color is 2.5R 6/22.
Another example - the color 10B 1/6 is maximum chromatic color for hue 10B and for value of 1.


The Munsell color wheel includes 1900+ colors organized in a color wheel.

Each color wheel represent given chroma. Circle segments represents hue and "rows" of the circle represents value (lightness).

You will receive a ZIP file with content:
- a file containing all 12 color wheel on single page. In formats A1 (9354x13244 px), 34x44 in (13600x17600 px), 36x48 in (14400x19200 px)
- 12 files for individual 12 color wheels (each file 7016x7287 px)
- all in PDF and PNG formats

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ZIP with 15 files in PDF + PNG (total 30 files)

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125 MB
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