• Munsell System Of Color Notation
• Munsell System Conversion System
• Munsell Value Chart

First devised as a color description teaching aid, the Munsell Color System was expanded and quantitatively formalized in the 1940s. The analysis led to small adjustments in the samples color in order to improve the spacing uniformity between them. The results were published in 1943 (Ref. Two of the most widely used color order systems are the Munsell Color System and the RAL Design System. When using both color systems, it would be useful to convert the nomenclature from one to the other.

In colorimetry, the Munsell color system is a color space that specifies colors based on three properties of color: hue, value (lightness), and chroma (color purity). It was created by Professor Albert H. Munsell in the first decade of the 20th century and adopted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as the official color system for soil research in the 1930s.

Several earlier color order systems had placed colors into a three-dimensional color solid of one form or another, but Munsell was the first to separate hue, value, and chroma into perceptually uniform and independent dimensions, and he was the first to illustrate the colors systematically in three-dimensional space.^[1] Munsell's system, particularly the later renotations, is based on rigorous measurements of human subjects' visual responses to color, putting it on a firm experimental scientific basis. Because of this basis in human visual perception, Munsell's system has outlasted its contemporary color models, and though it has been superseded for some uses by models such as CIELAB (L*a*b*) and CIECAM02, it is still in wide use today.^[2]

• 1Explanation

Explanation[edit]

The system consists of three independent properties of color which can be represented cylindrically in three dimensions as an irregular color solid:

• hue, measured by degrees around horizontal circles
• chroma, measured radially outward from the neutral (gray) vertical axis
• value, measured vertically on the core cylinder from 0 (black) to 10 (white)

Munsell determined the spacing of colors along these dimensions by taking measurements of human visual responses. In each dimension, Munsell colors are as close to perceptually uniform as he could make them, which makes the resulting shape quite irregular. As Munsell explains:

Desire to fit a chosen contour, such as the pyramid, cone, cylinder or cube, coupled with a lack of proper tests, has led to many distorted statements of color relations, and it becomes evident, when physical measurement of pigment values and chromas is studied, that no regular contour will serve.

Hue[edit]

Each horizontal circle Munsell divided into five principal hues: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple, along with 5 intermediate hues (e.g., YR) halfway between adjacent principal hues.^[4] Each of these 10 steps, with the named hue given number 5, is then broken into 10 sub-steps, so that 100 hues are given integer values. In practice, color charts conventionally specify 40 hues, in increments of 2.5, progressing as for example 10R to 2.5YR.

Two colors of equal value and chroma, on opposite sides of a hue circle, are complementary colors, and mix additively to the neutral gray of the same value. The diagram below shows 40 evenly spaced Munsell hues, with complements vertically aligned.

Value[edit]

Value, or lightness, varies vertically along the color solid, from black (value 0) at the bottom, to white (value 10) at the top.^[5] Neutral grays lie along the vertical axis between black and white.

Several color solids before Munsell's plotted luminosity from black on the bottom to white on the top, with a gray gradient between them, but these systems neglected to keep perceptual lightness constant across horizontal slices. Instead, they plotted fully saturated yellow (light), and fully saturated blue and purple (dark) along the equator.

Chroma[edit]

Chroma, measured radially from the center of each slice, represents the “purity” of a color (related to saturation), with lower chroma being less pure (more washed out, as in pastels).^[6] Note that there is no intrinsic upper limit to chroma. Different areas of the color space have different maximal chroma coordinates. For instance light yellow colors have considerably more potential chroma than light purples, due to the nature of the eye and the physics of color stimuli. This led to a wide range of possible chroma levels—up to the high 30s for some hue–value combinations (though it is difficult or impossible to make physical objects in colors of such high chromas, and they cannot be reproduced on current computer displays). Vivid solid colors are in the range of approximately 8.

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Specifying a color[edit]

A color is fully specified by listing the three numbers for hue, value, and chroma in that order. For instance, a purple of medium lightness and fairly saturated would be 5P 5/10 with 5P meaning the color in the middle of the purple hue band, 5/ meaning medium value (lightness), and a chroma of 10 (see swatch).

History and influence[edit]

The idea of using a three-dimensional color solid to represent all colors was developed during the 18th and 19th centuries. Several different shapes for such a solid were proposed, including: a double triangular pyramid by Tobias Mayer in 1758, a single triangular pyramid by Johann Heinrich Lambert in 1772, a sphere by Philipp Otto Runge in 1810, a hemisphere by Michel Eugène Chevreul in 1839, a cone by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1860, a tilted cube by William Benson in 1868, and a slanted double cone by August Kirschmann in 1895.^[7] These systems became progressively more sophisticated, with Kirschmann’s even recognizing the difference in value between bright colors of different hues. But all of them remained either purely theoretical or encountered practical problems in accommodating all colors. Furthermore, none was based on any rigorous scientific measurement of human vision; before Munsell, the relationship between hue, value, and chroma was not understood.^[7]

Albert Munsell, an artist and professor of art at the Massachusetts Normal Art School (now Massachusetts College of Art and Design, or MassArt), wanted to create a “rational way to describe color” that would use decimal notation instead of color names (which he felt were “foolish” and “misleading”),^[8] which he could use to teach his students about color. He first started work on the system in 1898 and published it in full form in A Color Notation in 1905.

The original embodiment of the system (the 1905 Atlas) had some deficiencies as a physical representation of the theoretical system. These were improved significantly in the 1929 Munsell Book of Color and through an extensive series of experiments carried out by the Optical Society of America in the 1940s resulting in the notations (sample definitions) for the modern Munsell Book of Color. Though several replacements for the Munsell system have been invented, building on Munsell's foundational ideas—including the Optical Society of America's Uniform Color Scales, and the International Commission on Illumination’s CIELAB (L*a*b*) and CIECAM02 color models—the Munsell system is still widely used, by, among others, ANSI to define skin and hair colors for forensic pathology, the USGS for matching soil colors, in prosthodontics during the selection of shades for dental restorations, and breweries for matching beer colors.^[9][10][b]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

1. ^There are mathematical issues with this depiction: If one calls the concentric rings 'chroma' and the horizontal stripes 'lightness', then it is not possible to have a color whose 'chroma' is 2 (counting from the center outward) and 'lightness' is 9 (counting from the bottom to the top). This means that each color cannot be uniquely identified by a single set of 'hue', 'lightness' and 'chroma' values. Albert Munsell's color sphere was designed in such a way to avoid this pitfall, however.
2. ^Beer color is measured in Degrees Lovibond, a metric based on the Munsell system

References[edit]

1. ^Kuehni (2002), p. 21
2. ^Landa (2005), pp. 437–438,
3. ^Munsell (1912), p. 239
4. ^Cleland (1921), Ch. 1
5. ^Cleland (1921), Ch. 2
6. ^Cleland (1921), Ch. 3
7. ^ ^abKuenhi (2002), pp. 20–21
8. ^(Munsell 1905), ch.1, pg. 7
9. ^MacEvoy (2005)
10. ^Landa (2005), pp. 442–443.

Bibliography[edit]

• Cleland, Thomas M. (1921). A practical description of the Munsell color system, with suggestions for its use. Boston: Munsell Color Company. One of the first books about the Munsell color system, explaining the intuition behind its three dimensions, and suggesting possible uses of the system in picking color combinations. An edited version can be found at http://www.applepainter.com/.
• Kuehni, Rolf G. (February 2002). 'The early development of the Munsell system'. Color Research and Application. 27 (1): 20–27. doi:10.1002/col.10002. A description of color systems leading up to Munsell's, and a biographical explanation of Munsell's changing ideas about color and development of his color solid, leading up to the publication of A Color Notation in 1905.
• Landa, Edward R.; Fairchild, Mark D. (September–October 2005). 'Charting Color from the Eye of the Beholder'(PDF). American Scientist. 93 (5): 436–443. CiteSeerX10.1.1.77.9634. doi:10.1511/2005.5.436. An introductory explanation of the development and influence of the Munsell system.
• MacEvoy, Bruce (2005-08-01). 'Modern Color Models – Munsell Color System'. Color Vision. Retrieved 2007-04-16. A concise introduction to the Munsell color system, on a web page which also discusses several other color systems, putting the Munsell system in its historical context.
• Munsell, Albert H. (1905). A Color Notation. Boston: G. H. Ellis Co. Munsell's original description of his system. A Color Notation was published before he had established the irregular shape of a perceptual color solid, so it describes colors positioned in a sphere.
• Munsell, Albert H. (January 1912). 'A Pigment Color System and Notation'. The American Journal of Psychology. 23 (2): 236–244. doi:10.2307/1412843. JSTOR1412843. Munsell's description of his color system, from a lecture to the American Psychological Association.
• Nickerson, Dorothy (1976). 'History of the Munsell color system, company, and foundation'. Color Research and Application. 1 (1): 7–10.^{[dead link]}

External links[edit]

• Munsell.com, the homepage of Munsell Color, a subdivision of X-Rite, current owners of the Munsell Color Company.
  • Munsell page at the X-Rite website.
• Munsell Color Science Laboratory at the Rochester Institute of Technology, an academic laboratory dedicated to color science, endowed by the Munsell Foundation.
  • Munsell renotation data in plain text format (from the 1940s Optical Society of America renotations).
• ApplePainter.com, a site explaining the Munsell color chart, including an edited version of Cleland's book, A practical description of the Munsell color system.
• An explanation of the Munsell system at Adobe.com. Retrieved 13 August 2003
• A brief explanation at the site of the Japanese company Dainichiseika Color & Chemicals, including a nice diagram of the Munsell color solid.
• A flash-based Munsell Palette color-picker from web-design firm Triplecode (based on a version originally created at the MIT Media Lab).
• ToyPalette from Loo & Cox, a web application for generating color palettes from images. Munsell color analysis of digital image.

I'm looking at at document that describes the standard colors used in dentistry to describe the color of a tooth. They quote hue, value, chroma values, and indicate they are from the 1905 Munsell description of color:

The system of colour notation developed by A. H. Munsell in 1905 identifies colour in terms of three attributes: HUE, VALUE (Brightness) and CHROMA (saturation) [15]

HUE (H): Munsell defined hue as the quality by which we distinguish one colour from another. He selected five principle colours: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple; and five intermediate colours: yellow-red, green-yellow, blue-green, purple-blue, and red-purple. These were placed around a colour circle at equal points and the colours in between these points are a mixture of the two, in favour of the nearer point/colour (see Fig 1.).

VALUE (V): This notation indicates the lightness or darkness of a colour in relation to a neutral grey scale, which extends from absolute black (value symbol 0) to absolute white (value symbol 10). This is essentially how ‘bright’ the colour is.

CHROMA (C): This indicates the degree of divergence of a given hue from a neutral grey of the same value. The scale of chroma extends from 0 for a neutral grey to 10, 12, 14 or farther, depending upon the strength (saturation) of the sample to be evaluated.

There are various systems for categorising colour, the Vita system is most commonly used in Dentistry. This uses the letters A, B, C and D to notate the hue (colour) of the tooth. The chroma and value are both indicated by a value from 1 to 4. A1 being lighter than A4, but A4 being more saturated than A1. If placed in order of value, i.e. brightness, the order from brightest to darkest would be:

A1, B1, B2, A2, A3, D2, C1, B3, D3, D4, A3.5, B4, C2, A4, C3, C4

The exact values of Hue, Value and Chroma for each of the shades is shown below (16)

Sonic adventure 2 free pc. So my question is, can anyone convert Munsell HVC into RGB, HSB or HSL?

They say that Value(Brightness) varies from 0.10, which is fine. So i take 7.05 to mean 70.5%.

Harry potter prisoner of azkaban. This leads to his running away and being picked up by the. Harry involuntarily inflates when she comes to visit after she insults Harry and his parents.

But what is Hue measured in? i'm used to hue being measured in degrees (0.360). But the values i see would all be red - when they should be more yellow, or brown.

Finally, it says that Choma/Saturation can range from 0.10 ..or even higher - which makes it sound like an arbitrary scale.

So can anyone convert Munsell HVC to HSB or HSL, or better yet, RGB?

8 Answers

The hue specification you've given here is incomplete (4.5 should be 4.5Y etc). Since the link is dead, if anyone is interested, the specs are still alive here:http://web.archive.org/web/20071103065312/http://lib.umich.edu/dentlib/Dental_tables/Colorshadguid.html

The only free utility for Munsell conversion I could find was this:

Very old as you can see, but seems to work well. Current programs that can do this are not free:

• http://www.babelcolor.com/main_level/download.htm (this one has a free 14 day trial)

The current holders of the Munsell products are X-Rite, they probably have some conversion solutions as well.

Further, note that the link you supplied includes definitions for the same colors in other color coordinates - namely Yxy and CIE lab*. Both can be freely converted online at http://www.colorpro.com/info/tools/convert.htm or offline with this free color converter

It is rather involved. The short answer is, converting Munsell codes into RGB involves interpolation of empirical data in 3D that is highly non-linear. The only data set that is publicly available was collected in the 1930's. Free or inexpensive programs that I have found on the net have proved to be flawed. I wrote my own. But I am jumping ahead. Let's start with the basics.

Munsell codes are different in kind than those other codes, xyY, Lab, and RGB. Munsell notation describes the color of an object - what people experience when they view the object. (Isaac Newton was the first to realize that color is in the eye of the beholder.) Munsell conducted extensive experiments with human subjects and ingenious devices.

The other codes, i.e. xyY, Lab*, and RGB, describe light that has bounced off an object and passed through a convolultion with a rather simple mathematical model of a human eye. Some google-terms are 'illuminant,' 'tri-stimulus,' and 'CIE standard observer.'

Munsell describes the colors of objects as they are perceived under a wide variety of illuminants. Another google-term is 'chromatic adaptation.' Chromatic adaptation in the brain is automatic if the lighting is not too weird. It is really quite remarkable. Take a piece of typing paper outside under a blue sky. The paper looks white. Take it indoors and look at it under incandescent (yellowish) lights. It still looks white! Munsell tapped into that astonishing processing power empirically. Munsell codes also preserve perceived hue at different chromas. A sky-blue and a powder-blue that Munsell assigns the same hue notation, e.g. 5RP, will appear to the typical human with normal eyesight to be the same hue. More on that in the footnote.

CIE xyY, Lab*, and RGB mean nothing unless an illuminant is specified. Chromatic adaptation for illuminants in the mathematical model is computationally difficult. (Rough but simple approximations can be done using the 'Bradford matrices.') The RGB that we use is by default 'sRGB,' which specifies an illuminant called D65. D65 is something like a cloudless day at noon. The Lab numbers listed by the OP are probably relative to D50, which is more like afternoon or morning light. The xyY numbers might be relative to D50, or they might be relative to an old standard called C. I am not going to check. C was the light from a standard lighting fixture that was relatively inexpensive to build in the 1930's. It is obsolete. But C plays a key role in the answer to the question.

In the 1930's, color scientists were developing the mathematical models. One of the things they did was to take a standard Munsell Book of Color, shine illuminant-C light on the colored chips in the book, and record the data in xyY format. That is the only one that is freely available. Others surely exist, but they are closely held secrets.

Good news though. The data set works good. The Munsell authority today is a company called Gretag Macbeth. I imagine they have voluminous data related to the color-chips they sell. The only numbers I know of that they publish are the D50 Lab and D65 sRGB numbers for a small set of colors on their 'Color Checker' cards. I wrote an interpolator based on the old renotation data. It agrees with the numbers for the Color Checker card almost exactly. I regret to inform that so far I have only written code for the conversion that goes the opposite direction from what the OP requested (a year ago, as I type this). It goes from sRGB to Munsell. I click on an image, and the program displays the sRGB and Munsell notations for the area clicked upon. I use it for oil painting.

Footnote: CIE has a standard that is analogous to Munsell. It is called LCh subscripted with a,b. It is Lab* in polar coordinates. The hues are in degrees. Chroma numbers are approximately 5 times the C in Munsell HVC. LCh has its problems though. If you have ever used a photo editor to pump up the vividness of the sky, only to see the blue turn to purple, the program was probably using LCh. When I started writing my program, I was unaware that Bruce Lindloom had done work that parallels what I was doing. His web site was invaluable to me as I finished the project. He designed a space he calls UPLab, which is LCh straightened out to align with Munsell. I had already re-invented LCh and (essentially) UPLab before I discovered Mr. Linbloom's site, but his knowledge of the subject far exceeds mine.

Colour, our open source Python colour science package allows to perform that conversion.

From Munsell Renotation System to CIE xyY Colourspace

The following two definitions based on Centore (2012) method converts between Munsell Renotation System and CIE xyY colourspace:

From CIE xyY Colourspace to sRGB Colourspace

Converting from CIE xyY colourspace to sRGB colourspace is done by first converting to CIE XYZ tristimulus values and then to sRGB colourspace using the following definitions:

Implementation

Here is an annotated complete example using the above definitions:

[ 0.96820063 0.74966853 0.60617991]

You can also perform the reverse conversion from sRGB colourspace to Munsell Renotation System:

4.2YR 8.1/5.3

References

• Centore, P. (2012). An open-source inversion algorithm for the Munsell renotation. Color Research & Application, 37(6), 455–464. doi:10.1002/col.20715

For completeness, here's the archive.org version of my page, that contains the colors in 3 colorspaces, Munsell, Yxy and Lab:

References

• 151 O'Brien, W.J., Groh, C.L., and Boenke, K.M. A new, small- color-difference equation for dental shades. J.Dent. Res. 69:1762-1764, 1990.
• 152 O'Brien, W.J., Groh, C.L., and Boenke, K.M. Unpublished data. University of Michigan School of Dentistry, Ann Arbor.

There is a free R package munsell which will (among other things) convert Munsell codes to RGB:

There's a page I've found here: munsell-to-rgb.blogspot.com that seems to be doing exactly what you are after. It seems unfinished at the moment, but the owner of the blog plans to update it regularly with as many Munsell-to-RGB conversions as he can (and he takes requests!).

It's amazing how hard it is to find accessible conversion tables for these colour systems; hopefully this will be our answer! :D

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Munsell System Of Color Notation

I'm late to the party, but I found another resource that may be useful on this topic.

Someone at the 'Munsell Color Science Laboratory' dug up some 1943 data from Munsell, all based on 1930s Munsell research: http://www.cis.rit.edu/research/mcsl2/online/munsell.php

The page refers to an Excel spreadsheet with the 'real colors only' subset of the data that falls within the 'Macadam limit', which appears to mean the gamut of colors that can actually appear on reflective surfaces. The spreadsheet link doesn't work, however, but on a hunch I guessed that it left out one level of the directory tree. I tried the URL http://www.cis.rit.edu/research/mcsl2/online/real_sRGB.xls -- and it worked. (I wouldn't be surprised if the owner of the site eventually notices it, and fixes the link, which is likely to break my link.)

I messed with that spreadsheet a little to get it to generate HTML to show me the RGB colors, and added these cells to the spreadsheet:

The table needs one line each of the ones starting with A2 through A1626, and one each of the others.

I hope this helps.

Despite this old post, to update Steve's answer, here are 'corrected' links to RIT's repositories of Munsell data:

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And a direct link to spreadsheet of the sRGB converted values of the 'real' Munsell colors:

It's a spreadsheet which includes a conversion from Munsell HVC notation to xyY, then to XYZ_C, then converted to D65 illuminant, then to floating point sRGB, then quantized to 8bit sRGB values (which they call dRGB).

As for the OP's question: sRGB is (obviously) an RGB additive color model. But the differences to other color models such as subtractive CMYK are complex enough that a 'simple' algorithm won't handle the conversion — while color model transformations can be approximated with a matrix, more often a LUT (Look Up Table) is preferred, such as a LUT in an ICC profile or a 3D LUT as used in film production. (Not all ICC profiles are LUT based, but a LUT based conversion IMO is what is needed here).

The Munsell data certainly falls into this category, as not only is it a different color model, it is not only a subtractive model it is based on perception, while sRGB is based on a simple relationship between red green and blue light.

The spreadsheet is the useable look-up-table, so then a program to convert things like your dental chart to sRGB would take in that data and reference the LUT contained in the spreadsheet, and return the sRGB values.

Side Note: I want to mention for clarity that although some color-space or color-model transforms can be done reasonably with an algorithm/matrix, 3D LUTs are preferred particularly when the LUTs are created from measured data of a given color-model/space, which maps the many non-linearities inherent in some models.

An extreme example is an sRGB image on your computer monitor vs how that image is printed onto paper and appears on the cover of a magazine sitting on a newsstand illuminated with florescent light. That requires a 3D LUT for an accurate transformation!

In the feature film industry (where I mostly work) we use 3D LUTs throughout the image pipeline, not just for converting/transforms, but for 'viewing' and for applying/emulating 'looks.' For instance taking an image shot with a digital camera and applying a LUT of a certain film stock to that image to make it appear as film.

Munsell System Conversion System

Munsell Value Chart

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