Color Basics for Color-by-Number Fans

You do not need to know any color theory to enjoy a color-by-number picture. The numbers do the deciding for you. Still, a few simple ideas make it easier to understand why a finished picture looks the way it does, and they come in handy when you make puzzles from your own photos.

Three ways to describe a color

Painters and designers usually describe a color with three qualities. Each one answers a different question.

• Hue is which color family it belongs to: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Hues are often arranged in a circle, the color wheel, where red runs into orange, orange into yellow, and purple loops back to red.
• Value is how light or dark the color is. Pale pink and deep maroon can share the same red hue but sit at opposite ends of the value scale.
• Saturation is how intense or pure the color is. A bright tomato red is highly saturated. A dusty brick red is the same hue with less saturation, closer to gray. Gray, white and black have no saturation at all.

Try looking at the color circles at the bottom of the coloring screen with these three questions in mind. You will start noticing that two colors you thought were very different are really the same hue at different values, or that a green looks calm because it is low in saturation.

Why the palette is numbered in that order

In daubday, colors are not numbered at random. The neutral, grayish colors come first, sorted from light to dark. After that, the remaining colors follow their hue around the color wheel. Only colors that actually appear in the picture are kept, so there are no unused circles to scroll past.

This ordering has a practical benefit. Neighboring numbers tend to look alike, so the palette works as a map: if you know the warm colors sit together, you can find the orange you need faster. It also makes the progress you see more meaningful. When you work through the palette in order, the grays and neutrals usually build the quiet structure of the picture first, and then each hue family arrives in turn.

You do not have to color in number order. If you prefer to start with the brightest color or the biggest area, go ahead. The how to play guide explains how the next color is chosen automatically when you finish one.

Value contrast is what makes a picture read

If you take a colorful picture and imagine it in black and white, what remains is its value pattern. That pattern is what tells your eye where one shape ends and the next begins. Two colors with very different hues but the same value can blur together, while two shades of the same blue with very different values separate clearly.

You can see this in the gallery. Pictures in the City Night theme rely on bright windows and lights against dark sky, a strong value contrast that reads instantly. Softer pictures, such as many in the Flowers theme, use colors closer in value and feel gentler as a result. Neither is better. They simply do different things.

When a finished picture looks a bit flat, it is usually because many of its colors share a similar value. When it looks lively, there is usually a clear range from light to dark.

Noticing harmony in finished pictures

Once a picture is done, take a moment to look at how its colors work together. A few common patterns are easy to spot:

• Neighbors on the wheel, such as yellow, orange and red, feel warm and unified.
• Opposites on the wheel, such as blue and orange, make each other look brighter and draw attention.
• One hue at many values, such as a sea picture made mostly of blues, feels calm and coherent.
• A few saturated accents among muted colors guide your eye straight to those accents.

Noticing these is simply a way of looking more closely. It can make the slow part of coloring, filling the last few areas, more interesting.

Using this when you choose Colors for a photo

These ideas help directly on the My photo page. The Colors setting decides how many color groups your photo is reduced to, and the groups follow the photo's hues and values.

• If the photo's interest is in value, such as a strongly lit portrait or a silhouette at sunset, fewer colors often work well, because the light and dark shapes carry the picture.
• If the photo has many hues, such as a fruit stall or a flower bed, you will need more colors, or some hues will merge into each other.
• If the photo has soft gradients, such as sky or skin, more colors gives smoother steps from light to dark.

For a deeper look at how Colors, Detail and Smoothing interact, see the photo settings guide.