What Is Chrominance? Breaking Down Chroma in Details
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Chrominance aided the development of techniques for transmitting information about color, which enabled the transition to color television.
If you are unsure what chrominance is, don’t worry- we’ve got your back.
Read on to discover what chrominance is and how it revolutionized the TV and film industry.
If you want to start from the beginning, why not take a gander at our page on filmmaking to boost your knowledge?
What is chrominance?
There are many different definitions of chrominance on the internet. Here is a quick summarization of the term to void all confusion:
Chrominance, or Chroma, is an attribute of light that produces a sensation of color. It is a measurement of the quality of the light obtained by comparing qualities such as hue and saturation with a reference color source.
We can visualize it as part of a video signal that carries the information of the colors that are being displayed.
Specifically, it is the color of an object measured quantitatively in terms of a reference color. Therefore, it is the difference between a color and its reference color of the same brightness and chromaticity.
This is different from luminance.
It is represented as two color-difference components: U = B′ − Y′ (blue − luma) and V = R′ − Y′ (red − luma). By separating RGB color signals into luma and chrominance the bandwidth can be determined separately.
A chrominance signal is the product of the U and V signals modulating a color subcarrier signal. The phase and amplitude of the chrominance signal will mostly correspond to the hue and saturation values of that color.
Video and still photography systems may use a luma or chroma decomposition for improved visual compression.
Hue in chrominance
Chrominance is made up of two essential quantities of hue and saturation. Hue will take on a similar definition as in color theory. (If you’ve studied that before then you’re good to go!)
Hue can be described as a distinction between the colors around a color wheel- therefore, we can begin to think of it as a hue wheel.
You might say that a color has a greenish or reddish hue- it is the pure value of a color.
Saturation in chrominance
Saturation can be described as the colorfulness of an area, judged in the context of its brightness.
It is a qualitative measure of determining how pure a color looks based on how it appears in its environment and lighting.
It can help to also think of it as a color’s ‘intensity’- it is the extent to which an area lacks grayish tones or is a ‘pure’ color. We can measure this by the strength of a hue.
Now we can put this all together to understand chrominance. For example:
- Gray is neutral and can be described as a very low chroma.
- A telephone box red can be described as a high-chroma red.
Up next: What is luminance
Now that you’re clued up on chrominance, it’s time to take a deep dive and discover the importance of luminance. Check out our page on luminance here.
What is chrominance?
Chrominance is a signal that is used in most video systems. It conveys information about colors by comparing attributes such as hue and saturation with a reference color.
What is hue and saturation in chrominance?
Hues and saturations help determine the value and tone within chrominance. A hue describes a dimension of color that we experience when we look at a color. e.g. red, blue, green, etc. Saturation is the strength of dominance of that hue: it is the amount of white light mixed with a color.
What is chrominance made of?
Chrominance is the combination of two different quantities: hue and saturation.
