Digital Color Theory 101
Everything you need to know about pixels, light, and how our eyes see magic. ✨
The Physics of Light
Look closely at your screen. Every color you see—millions of them—is created by mixing just three colors of light: Red, Green, and Blue.
This is called Additive Color Mixing. Unlike paint, where mixing colors gets darker (Subtractive), mixing light adds brightness.
- Red + Green = Yellow
- Red + Blue = Magenta
- Blue + Green = Cyan
- All Three = Pure White
Thinking Like a Human (HSL)
While machines speak RGB, humans speak in Hue, Saturation, and Lightness.
Hue
The "family" of the color. Represented as a degree on a circle (0-360°).
Saturation
The intensity. 0% is gray, 100% is the most vivid version of that color.
Lightness
How bright it is. 0% is Black, 100% is White. 50% is the pure color.
Perceptual Uniformity (OKLCH)
Traditional color spaces like HSL have a flaw: mathematically identical lightness values don't look equally bright to us.
OKLCH is a modern color space that fixes this. It separates lightness, chroma, and hue in a way that matches human vision perfectly.