Colorfulness

Colorfulness is the perceived intensity of a color’s chromatic character, distinct from its hue and from its lightness or brightness.

Hue: Hue is the perceptual attribute by which colors are identified as red, green, blue, or other color families. Hue names the color family, while colorfulness describes how strongly that family is perceived.
Color vision: Color vision is the visual capacity to distinguish differences in the spectral composition of light. Colorfulness emerges from the visual system’s processing of chromatic signals.
CIECAM02: CIECAM02 is a color appearance model that predicts perceptual attributes from viewing conditions and tristimulus values. Its equations provide a formal estimate of colorfulness under specified conditions.
Colorfulness versus chroma: Colorfulness and chroma are related color-appearance attributes, with chroma defined relative to a reference white. The distinction clarifies why equal chroma and equal colorfulness are not always equivalent.
Lightness: Lightness is the perceived brightness of an object relative to a similarly illuminated white object. Lightness is a separate dimension of appearance, even when greater lightness changes perceived colorfulness.
Cone cell: A cone cell is a retinal photoreceptor specialized for vision in brighter conditions and for distinguishing wavelengths. Cone responses provide the chromatic signals from which colorfulness is judged.
CIECAM16: CIECAM16 is a CIE color appearance model designed to predict perceived colors under varying viewing conditions. It offers a newer framework for calculating colorfulness in practical color management.
Colorfulness versus saturation: Colorfulness and saturation describe chromatic intensity using different reference relationships to brightness. Their everyday overlap hides different technical definitions and scaling behavior.
Brightness: Brightness is the perceived amount of light emitted or reflected by a surface or source. Brightness concerns apparent luminous intensity, not the strength of chromatic character.
Opponent process: Opponent-process theory describes visual channels that encode color through opposing responses, such as red versus green. Opponent channels help encode the chromatic strength underlying perceived colorfulness.

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