Light flowing into the eyes is perceived by the mind as an interplay of shapes with color, size, dimension, perspective, and meaning. Color is integral to human perception. Without color, shapes lose clarity and meaning because the mind perceives shape by noticing subtle changes in color. One reason the paintings of Vincent van Gogh are so popular is that he makes magical use of color to form shapes and images that swirl and blend and come alive on the canvas.
Color is an important communication tool when used carefully on web pages and in programs.
Most work with color is device-dependent meaning that colors created on one hardware platform do not look the same when shown on another hardware platform. Even a good reproduction of van Gogh's The Starry Night does not really capture the color, texture, and magic of the original. Keeping the look and feel designed into an application or electronic art with color is also a challenge in today's open systems of heterogeneous platforms. The sRGB color space is a proposed standard for a simple and robust color definition for use in operating systems, device drivers, and the Internet to help ensure a color is correctly mapped from one platform to another without a significant loss of color information. While the Impressionist painters of yesterday used palettes and easles to create colors, color scientists in the computer age use color spaces and number values to represent colors in 2D and 3D spaces.