Color Value

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What Does Color Value Mean?

In color theory, a color value is actually a shade of lightness. IT professionals or others might use the terms “lightness” and “color value” interchangeably. Color values are often presented in a chart or graph to help developers or others to choose from various specific shades of color for the purposes of applying to visual projects.

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Techopedia Explains Color Value

A color value scale starts with light and ends with dark. Other categories in between might include light/medium, medium and medium/dark. Again, color values for digital projects are commonly represented on a digital graph, scale or palate for users to choose from. In addition to color values, users can add differing amounts of red, green or blue, or other primary colors to create secondary color hues.

Color values are important in providing precise choices in the vast color scale that became possible with the hardware of the 1990s. Prior to that time, digital color was mostly confined to a few individual primary colors. The rapid advancement of color display technology has led to much more emphasis on applying specific color values to displays.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.