Hue Shifts

[Fizz]

Can anyone explain to me what a hue shift's purpose is and show me an example?

Thanks in advance.

[AlexHW]

Hueshift, is basically when you change hues in degrees..
an example:

You can see the top one is just a green color which gets gradually darker, but the lower one is a green color which gets both darker and bluer..
The purpose can be various reasons, such as dynamic or aesthetic reasons.. it could also be usefull for describeing the movements of light within the piece..

[Meta|Fox]

The top example shows basic hue shifting and the bottom shows how you can hue shift while still keeping to a chosen colour theme.

[Terley]

you can be very drastic with your hue shifts or just suttle to add hints of other colours to your work.. I like to think that moving closer to the blue's when you darken, and to the yellow to lighten.. but you don't have to keep to a certain path like on the examples.. you can zigzag, gradually get less saturated, more saturated, or even work out combinations yourself.. colour is a magical thing, make the most of it.

[Meta|Fox]

lol Terley, nice avatar

[Rydin]

Hue shifting can be pretty usefull if you're trying to keep a low color count, because what you could be using to shade in on area you could use for a base color in another area.  But the main reason for hue shifting, I like to think, is to get effective shading without making the pic look "dingy" if you know what I mean.

[MoD]

It's also very usefiul with colored lightsources, where the lightsource's color is shown most in highlights and the object's actual color is prevalent in the midtones.

[Soup]

But I don't think hueshifts are needed in spriting something cartoon light.
Realistically , colors to blend and change, so there is a need for hueshift.

[Terley]

adding hue shifts isn't about making something look realistic, its about adding that 'extra' level to your work, it makes a winter scene feel cold on the eyes, and a fire feel hot.. It adds warmth to a characters skin, it's simply foolish to not take advantage of what using the whole spectrum can bring to the quality of your work.. whether your excuse is that you want to make cartoons, not realism. Look back to the first 'cartoons' made, great care was made to bring real art to life through the discovery of animation, what your basically saying is 'yeah but I just want to be lazy'..

[Feron]

if someone says grass - you immediately think "green".  however upon further inspection, there are yellows and browns in there.
"brick" implies browns/reds, however you can also see purples, greens and blues.

look closely at objects and you will see colors you automatically dont assosciate with it.  hues shifts will make your pieces look more realistic.

[AlexHW]

I'm starting to think hueshifting implies that the hues are not blended in correlation to the actuallity of the situation. Meaning that the shift in hues is related to the artists whim, and not the technicallity of the suggested light.
Why am I thinking this? Because if it were based upon the technicallity and actuallity of the suggested light(since all color is derived from light), then there would be no real need for such a term. It is only when you disassociate yourself from the mechanics of light that such a term could mean anything because you'd need a way to describe your choice of color when your choice of color does not follow the commonly accepted rules.

If you are following the commonly accepted rules of light, then hue-shifting just means you are blending colors..

[MoD]

I think the term is needed more to describe the slight change in hues from shadows to highlights that is present in reality as opposed to the strict variation of luminance often present in pixels. However, the term could apply to any changing of a hue--calling hue shifting the shifting of a hue isn't far from the truth.

[Fizz]

Thanks for all your input.  It was very helpful to me.

What hue would white shift too?  Does it not? Can it go to all colors? Or does it go to gray only?

[Xion]

White would shift to anything. Honestly though, white should be restricted to use on highlights.

[MoD]

See the diagram here:

(It's probably not exactly shaped like this if you looked at actual values, but I don't have that data and this should be close enough.)
This shows that as luminosity nears extremes, the saturation you can show decreases, meaning that black and white can be any hue because at the ends of the luminosity continuum you get no saturation. That there's no saturation results in any hue producing the same color as any other. You can shift white and black to anything, but they really don't have any standard shift because they themselves aren't hues.