The Basics

How do we see colors? Well, first of all you need to understand that the human eye is actually seeing energy when you see colors. Electromagnetic energy. But our eye's can't see all ranges of this energy. We can only see a small portion of the full electromagnetic energy spectrum. This section is known as the visible spectrum. Aptly named as these are the energies that can be seen with the human eye. These would basically be the colors that appear in a rainbow. Waves beyond either end of this portion of the scale are not visible to us. They would include radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet, etc. When you combine all of the various colors of this visible spectrum you end up with white light. Hard to believe combining a whole bunch of different colors will give you white, but it's true. Trust me.

When you see something of a certain color; we'll use a red tomato in this case, it's not actually the tomato that contains red content. The red that you are seeing is actually happening because of the molecular structure and make-up of that tomato's surface. In this senario the tomato would be absorbing all other colors (wavelengths) of light and reflecting only the red waves back at you. Therefore, you see red. This is of course asuming you are viewing this tomato with a light containing the majority of all the visible wavelengths. Remember, when you combine all of these wavelengths, you are in essence creating white light. So in this case you would be firing all colors of the visible spectrum at the tomato and all colors but red are being absorbed.

If you viewed this same tomato under blue lights, it would probably appear black. This is because it would be absorbing all wavelengths of the light hitting it leaving none to be reflected. The absence of light is black. There would be no red wavelengths in the original light source to be reflected if it was a blue light. Obviously a color of light can't be reflected if it's not present in the first place. Right?

There's a quick explanation as to how your eyes see color. In a pretty small nut shell I might ad. Still with me? Let's move on, shall we? Or would you rather watch paint dry!