Neutral grays lie along the vertical axis between black and white. Value, or lightness, varies vertically along the color solid, from black (value 0) at the bottom, to white (value 10) at the top. As Munsell explains:Дesire to fit a chosen contour, such as the pyramid, cone, cylinder or cube, coupled with a lack of proper tests, has led to many distorted statements of color relations, and it becomes evident, when physical measurement of pigment values and chromas is studied, that no regular contour will serve. In each dimension, Munsell colors are as close to perceptually uniform as he could make them, which makes the resulting shape quite irregular. Munsell determined the spacing of colors along these dimensions by taking measurements of human visual responses. value, measured vertically on the core cylinder from 0 (black) to 10 (white).chroma, measured radially outward from the neutral (gray) vertical axis.hue, measured by degrees around horizontal circles.The system consists of three independent properties of color which can be represented cylindrically in three dimensions as an irregular color solid: Notice the irregularity of the shape when compared with Munsell's earlier color sphere. Three-dimensional representation of the 1943 Munsell renotations (with portion cut away). Because of this basis in human visual perception, Munsell's system has outlasted its contemporary color models, and though it has been superseded for some uses by models such as CIELAB ( L*a*b*) and CIECAM02, it is still in wide use today. Munsell's system, particularly the later renotations, is based on rigorous measurements of human subjects' visual responses to color, putting it on a firm experimental scientific basis. Several earlier color order systems had placed colors into a three-dimensional color solid of one form or another, but Munsell was the first to separate hue, value, and chroma into perceptually uniform and independent dimensions, and he was the first to illustrate the colors systematically in three-dimensional space. Munsell in the first decade of the 20th century and adopted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as the official color system for soil research in the 1930s. In colorimetry, the Munsell color system is a color space that specifies colors based on three properties of color: hue (basic color), chroma (color intensity), and value ( lightness). The Munsell color system, showing: a circle of hues at value 5 chroma 6 the neutral values from 0 to 10 and the chromas of purple-blue (5PB) at value 5.

Munsell color chart to rgb