La escala de color Munsell: el sistema de color tridimensional que comprende al ojo humano

The Munsell color scale: the three-dimensional color system that understands the human eye

Autor: Romina Llaguno

Albert Henry Munsell (1858–1918, Boston, USA) was a key figure in bridging the gap between art and science. A painter, art teacher, and inventor, he is known for developing one of the most influential systems for classifying and describing color: the Munsell Color System .

Henry Munsell graduated from the Boston Museum of Art School, where he also taught for much of his life. It's unusual to find figures whose work and development merge from a more artistic side to a physical and scientific one. The trend is usually the opposite. However, although Munsell began his career as an artist, his interest gradually shifted toward the scientific study of color, merging art and science in a pioneering endeavor.
Munsell dedicated much of his life to creating an orderly and rigorous system for describing colors accurately and replicably. At the beginning of the 20th century, existing methods for classifying colors were subjective and lacked theoretical and experimental solidity, hindering communication, dissemination, and teaching across diverse industries and disciplines.

Drawing inspiration from art and science, and motivated and influenced by new discoveries in visual psychology and optics, Munsell developed a system based on how the human eye perceives color, a key departure from the traditional color wheel that influenced how Munsell’s three-dimensional representation was presented. In 1905, Munsell published “A Color Notation,” a seminal work in color theory that presented his color classification system based on three perceptual attributes: hue, value, and chroma.

This system transformed the way we understand and use color, as Munsell established the three differentiating aspects of color: tone, lightness, and hue. This enabled more precise and universal communication about something so seemingly subjective, leaving a legacy that is still relevant today, especially in the digital age.

The Munsell Color Scale

Also known as the Munsell Tree, the color system created by the American inventor is based on three main dimensions:

Hue: Represents the type of color, such as red, yellow, green, blue, etc. Munsell defined 10 main tones subdivided into intermediate steps to obtain 100 tones in total.

Value: The lightness or darkness of a color, on a scale of 0 (black) to 10 (white). It represents perceptual luminosity.

Chroma: Measures the intensity or saturation of a color, ranging from neutral gray (chroma 0) to more vibrant colors. The maximum number varies depending on the hue and value.

In 1917, Munsell founded the Munsell Color Company, which later evolved into institutions such as the Munsell Color Science Laboratory (University of Rochester), a benchmark in color perception research.

His system served as the basis for later developments, including international standards such as CIELAB. Munsell demonstrated that color could be described with scientific precision without losing its aesthetic and artistic richness.

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