The Natural Color System (NCS) is a color system designed by the Scandinavian Colour Institute (sic, "color" is spelled differently in the name of the standard and the English translation of their name).
It is based on the six elementary color percepts of human vision: white, black, red, yellow, green, and blue, which are those that perceptually cannot be defined in terms of others; all the other colors are composite perceptions that can be defined in terms of those six. This means the appearance of a color can be readily predicted from its NCS notation, unlike from for example its RGB notation which often looks very unintuitive.
Colors in the NCS are defined by three values, specifying the amount of blackness (i.e. darkness), chromaticity (i.e. saturation), and a percentage value between two of the colours red, yellow, green or blue (i.e. hue). NCS color notations can also be tagged with a letter giving the version of the NCS color standard that was used to specify the color.
Examples of NCS color notation -- the colors of the Swedish flag:
- Yellow - NCS 0580-Y10R (= 5% darkness, 80% saturation, 90% yellow + 10% red = very slightly darkish mostly saturated yellow with a slight orangish tinge)
- Blue - NCS 4055-R95B (= 40% darkness, 55% saturation, 5% red + 95% blue = somewhat dark rather insaturated blue with a very slight purplish tinge)
The NCS standard is the one used by the International Colour Authority .
External links
