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Color enriches our lives and affects our moods. From red hot to blue moon to cool green shade, it paints our thoughts and our language with evocative images. Color is also the most important value factor when dealing with colored stones. A stone may be well-cut and clean, but its color is what makes it a Gem! Correctly used, the hue terms and the tone and saturation levels provide a systematic approach to communicating gem colors. Penoir Contemporary Jewelry uses the GIA Gem Set when describing Gemstones in all appraisals. An example of what you will see on your appraisal is: GB 6/4. This translates to Green-Blue Hue, Medium Dark Tone, and Moderately Strong Saturation. The accurate communication of color is one of the most difficult things a Gemologist ( or any person) is required to do. In order to communicate color the Gemological Institute of America has developed a system that separates color into its three components: Hue: Hue is the impression of color that we immediately notice, A gem's basic body color. A normal person with average vision can see up to 150 distinct hues, but in we use 31. This permits us to consistently, and in simple terms, communicate a stones hue. Click here to view the GIA Gem Set Hue Wheel. Tone: Tone is a color's lightness or darkness. You can get an idea of what tone means in color if you consider that many pinks are light tones of red. The GIA Color Grading System divides tone variations into I I levels, starting at 0, colorless (or white, when graders talk about translucent or opaque stones), and ending at 10, black. (As with hue, more divisions are possible, but these, too, would only make verbal descriptions less consistent and more complicated.) For transparent gems, you normally deal with only levels 2 through 8. Each tone level has a number and a corresponding word term. The Gem Set Tone Samples picture show the tone levels (white, grays, and black) and lists their numbers and corresponding terms. Saturation: Saturation (sometimes called intensity) is' the strength or purity of a hue. Expressions like "bright red" and "vibrant green" imply colors with highly saturated hues. On the other hand, "rust red" and "olive green" refer to low-saturation hues that look brownish or grayish. (Warm hues like red, orange, and yellow look brownish in low saturations; cool hues like blue, blue-green, and violet look grayish.) The GIA Color Grading System divides saturation variations into six levels that run from 1, grayish or brownish, through 6, vivid. (As with hue and tone, more divisions are possible, but not desirable.) You can see the number and word term associated with each saturation level in the photo of the Gem Set Saturation Samples. |
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