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I'm a little confused about color theory, I did some studying and research, I understand the concept of color harmony, analogous, complementary etc...should match, but then, some color schemes that don't meet the criteria look good, why is that?
The colors from image below for instance, the red and the blue seem to match but they are NOT analogous, and NOT complementary, they aren't triadic either...
Can anybody shed some light on this?
T h i s d o e s n o t c o m p u t e .
< h u m a n m o d e o n >
Color theory is not about numbers, it is not about angles. Nobody will be around measuring the color angle of the palette used to approve it or not.
It is about taste, about culture, about ambient, about feeling. It is a psychological interpretation, not a numerical one.
We are not machines.
If you are preparing your palette using one of those online tools that prepares automatic color schemes... stop doing it and start watching the design.
< / h u m a n m o d e o f f >
Look. Selecting colors based on a color wheel is an incredibly weak algorithm. For starters, we have not even agreed yet what the color wheel should look like. And obviously, you can not select a color with mathematical accuracy if you don't even agree with the underlying construct you use to select things.
See, the color wheel and color theory are Humanist constructs, not a scientific one (like hard sciences). This is why we have color theory and color science as separate subjects. Now, color science cannot help us here because there is no clear evidence that a color wheel makes sense as an interpretation other than: If you have 3 things to mix, yeah, it's someway cyclic in a plane. Which can have an interpretation of a wheel if you particularly want to have a nice simple shape*. If we would have 2, then it would be a line; if we would have 4, then it would be something more complex.
So the wheel is primarily a tool to help you think. Not so much of an exact tool.
Addendum:
Image 1: See, the color is close to 120 degrees, marked by lines. Wheel by color.adobe.com
Note: color.adobe.com uses some derivative of LCh color wheel. So, being harmonious according to theory just depends on the wheel used. Note it can be that the image is 120 degrees but has a blue filter on top of it... Since human senses are relative, that's fine that gets filtered away. Maybe the unconscious idea is to make the white warmer? Or perhaps authors monitor was calibrated clearly yellow. Who knows.
* If color science would try to build this, it would probably be a color blob. But they don't so... and the wheel is much nicer than blob.
One thing to add to the other great answers:
Perfectly mathematical balance often seems lifeless to the eye. Whether you talk about color or shape, something gets more interesting when there is a slight unbalance, and how you dispose of it is often what makes the style of an artist. Mondrian for example couldn't stand the green color, it was a part of what made his personnality in art.
One example are in trees, they are never fully symmetric, and it adds to the beauty of them. In early 3D designs, the repetition of too much "perfect" trees that were all the same was really awful in making a forest.. introducing diversity by adding random whas a huge step forward.
A very simple example I've been taught in architecture is the balance between full and empty, for example with pillars. You should never perfectly balance the filling and the void, or else it doesn't "vibrate", it seems dull:
balance = lifeless:
slight unbalance = more interesting:
All these tools for colors are the same than with shapes, they are just tools, but there should be more about what you do, an intention, your taste, and it often traduce into unbalancing things towards what you prefer.
