Chroma

Description

The perceived saturation, or intensity, of a color. Chroma is one of the three coordinates of the Munsell system of color notation. The maximum chroma, or 100 percent pure color, can have numbers of about 18-20. Weakly saturated colors can have chromas of about 2. The constant hue charts are prepared with regular progression from achromatic colors (black, gray, or white) at the left side of each chart to saturated colors on the right side. Chroma is an attribute in the CIE L*C*H* color model.

Resources and Citations

• Ralph Mayer, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1969 (also 1945 printing)

• Dictionary of Building Preservation, Ward Bucher, ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York City, 1996

• Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997

• The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998