Communications Technology Handbook, 2nd Edition

37 Television systems and signals

Analysis of light reveals three components:

•  brightness, which is electrically equivalent to the amplitude of the light;

•  hue, the colour which is determined by its wavelength; and

•  saturation, which is the variation in the depth of colour, i.e. the variation between a pastel and a deep shade.

White light is the summation of the total radiation within the visible spectrum and can also be simulated, as shown later.

A saturated colour that is diluted with white light becomes desaturated. Thus white is the ultimate desaturated colour. An object in nature appears to be coloured because it reflects certain parts of the spectrum only. Most of the colours that occur in nature can be simulated by the addition ...