Munsell Color Solid

The Munsell Color Solid is a color system created by the American painter Albert Henry Munsell (1858-1918). Munsell recognized the three dimensions of color to be hue, value, and saturation. The color solid is a representation of color space, or a way of integrating and showing the relationships of the three color dimensions. It was created by user testing of subtractive color and is based on the range of colors available for human sensation. The Munsell Color Solid was a system developed prior to the use of computers.



Model Structure
The basic structure of the Munsell Color Solid model is:
 * hues are arranged in a circular fashion around the center
 * chroma increases as one moves outward from the center
 * value increases from bottom to top

According to Munsell, hue is defined as "the quality by which we distinguish one color from another" (red vs. blue), value is defined as "the quality by which we distinguish a light color from a dark one" (sky blue vs. navy blue) and chroma is defined "distinguishing the difference from a pure hue to a gray shade". Ten major hues are recognized, and these are split into five principal hues (represented by a single layer) and five intermediate hues (represented by two letters). Each major hue is also split into 10 sub-hues. Values range from 0 to 10 (darkest to lightest), and chromas range from 0 to 16 (least to most saturated).

An important characteristic of the Munsell model is that equal steps in the model represent equal perceptual steps. Therefore, a color that is numerically midway between two other colors should appear to be perceptually midway between those colors.

Uses in Cartography
The Munsell Color system is rarely used directly in cartographic and geospatial software for specifying colors. However, it can be a useful reference for selecting proper colors due to its correspondence to Color Vision.