Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

Brightness/Lightness/Luminosity

The only things missing from our color wheel are the different brightness levels for all those colors. You could create a 3D color wheel in the shape of a cylinder with dark colors at its base and the brightest colors at the top (Figure 10.3). But because we'll probably never see anything that fancy in Photoshop, we'll just describe the brightness of a color using one of three words: brightness, lightness, and luminosity. Each of those words is just a slightly different way to describe how bright a color is, and as you become more traveled in Photoshop, you'll notice that Adobe can never seem to make up its mind on which one to use. So don't let all the terms confuse you, because they basically mean the same thing. ...