Munsell color book

Figure 2.13. The 2.5YR (yellow-red) page of a Munsell color book. The value is from white at the top to black at the bottom. Chroma becomes higher from left to right.

One page is reserved for each hue in the Munsell color book. Colors of the same hue are arranged two dimensionally on this page according to value and... 

Munsell, "Munsell Book of Color , Munsell Color Co, Baltimore, Md (1942) 3)W.D.Wright,... 

Munsell Color Company Munsell Book of Color Munsell Color Com-... 

Munsell Book of Color, Munsell Color Co., Baltimore, pocket edition (mat) 1929-1960, cabinet edition (renotations, glossy), 1958. 

Munsell book notation n. The Munsell color notation of a specimen obtained by visual or computational comparison with the Munsell hue, value, and chroma scales of the Munsell Book of Color. 

Munsell book of color n. A collection of color chips, which illustrate the Munsell Color System, manufactured by the Munsell Color Co. (MD, USA) in both matte and glossy finishes. It consists of pages of constant hue at 2.5 hue step intervals, with darkest colors (of lowest value at the bottom) increasing in value upwards to the top and colors of lowest chroma in the center fold increasing to highest chroma at the outside edge of the page. 

The Munsell color system is conceptually similar to the QELAB system, but with some significant differences. The Munsell system was conceived by the American painter Albert H. MunseU in 1905 with subsequent revisions and variations. The three variables used to describe colors in the system are hue, brightness (similar to lightness in QELAB), and saturation (similar to chroma also called value). As shown in Figure 11.14, the color space is cylindrical. The hue is divided into 100 equal spaces around the circle that forms the cross section of the cylinder, while the y direction is the brightness, scaled from 0 to 18. The x-axis is the saturation, scaled from 10 to 18. Munsell charts and collections are used in the forensic analysis of paints and soils. Because books and samples of color are used for color comparison, the Munsell color space is sometimes referred to as a catalog system. An example application is in soil analysis in which soil particles can be seived, sorted, and grouped by their Munsell color. 

The Munsell book standards corresponding to the limiting colors may even serve as material standards for industrial color control. In a material standard system the sample is compared with a standard by eye without the use of any meter or optical instrument. The success and popularity of these systems are largely due to their simplicity of application. The ability of the human eye to compensate for various illuminants and surroundings makes it possible for this system to give results even under mediocre conditions. The most critical work with material standards requires carefully controlled observing conditions. 

Initially, the gray area of the Mondrian was chosen and the energy given off by the patch on the Mondrian was measured. The subject was asked to match the corresponding colors for all of the areas of the color Mondrian from the book of colors. Next, a red area of the Mondrian was selected. The illumination of the color Mondrian was adjusted such that the energy given off by the red area was equivalent to the gray area that had been previously matched. The illumination of the Munsell book of colors always remained the... 

The average size of the offset samples was 50-100 xm the sizes of other samples ranged from 4 to 40 xm. An attempt was made to sample the complete range of hues in each manuscript. Hues were differentiated by both visual assessment and by comparison with color chips from The Munsell Book of Colors (21). 

The Munsell Book of Color, cabinet ed. Macbeth Division of Kollmorgen Corp. Baltimore, 1958. 

Over 150 pigment samples covering the spectrum of hues used in Cilician art were taken from the four manuscripts described above. The hues were differentiated both by visual assessment and by comparison with color chips from the Munsell Book of Colors (14). In addition, because both MS Freer 32.18 and MS W. 539 were painted by workshops, pigment samples were taken from all of the miniatures of recognizably different styles in these two manuscripts. 

The Munsell Book of Color Neighboring Hues Edition, Matte Finish... 

Munsell, A. H., Book of Color Defining, Explaining, and Illustrating the Fundamental Char-... 

More recently, color scientists have developed the much more complex CIE chromaticity diagram (Fig. 5.10) and computerized it so they can calculate precisely the matching of an experimental color with a desired model color. More practically, color technologists have assembled thousands of shades of color chips, arranging and organizing them and giving them code numbers for convenient reference. One of the hest known is the Munsell Book of Color. 

One of the best known color classification systems is that of Munsell which was devised in the early part of this century. The System relies on three attributes of color hue, chroma, and value. Hue refers to the color quality that is described by words like red, blue, and green in other words, the name of the color. Chroma is used to describe the purity or saturation of a color. It may be thought of as how dirty or clean a color is perceived to be. Value is the color term which we use to describe how light or dark a color is. The Munsell system plots color on a three-dimensional coordinate system in which the vertical axis represents value and the radial axis represents chroma. The various hues are arranged around the periphery of the three-dimensional solid. The Munsell Book of Color is a compilation of some 1500 painted paper chips which allow for comparison with a sample color. Approximately 100,000 colors can be distinguished in the Munsell system by interpolation [15]. A color representation of the Munsell system can be found in the books by Billmeyer and Saltzman [6], Overheim and Wagner [11], and Hunt [14] or on the Munsell homepage [16]. 

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