____A color space is a combination of parameters (typically three) that represent color. Change the value of a certain parameter, and the color would change accordingly. There's a series of color spaces for different purposes:

--RYB Traditional Color Space (well, as I was taught at a young age anyway): It's a combination of Red, Yellow and Blue. Something I played with in early elementary school during art class.

--RGB Additive Color Space: Similar to RYB, but with green instead of yellow. It's a combination of Red, Green and Blue that's used for TV screens and computer monitors. Combining all three primaries at the brightest intensity produces white.

--CMYK Subtractive Color Space: Technically RGB's polar opposite. It's a combination of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK that's used for printing. Since combining the first three primaries produces a dark (and ugly) brown instead of black, a fourth primary was included for a better representation of black, and for the sake saving some CMY ink.

____There's plenty of other color spaces to go around, but then there's the HSV color space and its close cousin HSL. They were designed primarily to be more intuitive and are commonly used for image editing and digital art. Unfortunately, since they're rearrangements of the RGB color space, their cylinder coordinates are filled with redundant colors at the top and bottom of said cylinder.

To begin, the Hue coordinate is one thing that both HSV and HSL have in common. It acts like a color wheel that uses degrees.

0° = Red

60° = Yellow

120° = Green

180° = Cyan

240° = Blue

300° = Magenta

____The Saturation coordinate in HSV and HSL determines how clean the color appears. However, the way saturation works in HSV is not the same as in HSL. It's true that 100% saturation in HSV is the same as in HSL, but it's a different story when it's at any level below 100%. The lower the saturation in HSV, the closer it gets to white. But in HSL, the lower the saturation, the closer it gets to gray.

____The Value coordinate in HSV determines how intense the color is. Seems simple enough, the lower the value the closer it gets to black. It's different with the Lightness coordinate in HSL though. While colors come closer to black when turning down the Value or Lightness in HSV and HSL, 100% Value in HSV is 50% Lightness in HSL. 100% Lightness is considered white, which is 100% Value and 0% Saturation in HSV. So, greater lightness is closer to white, while lower lightness is closer to black.

(The full version of this blog can be read here: https://www.minds.com/blog/view/706401383749787664 )