What is the opposite word of "greyscale" (or black and white)?

Solution 1:

full color

Oxford's definition : "The full range of colors"

Merriam-Webster's definition: "Not black and white"

Technically speaking a greyscale image can be considered a colored image, because white, black and grey are all colors too. Therefore, rather than opting for just the word color, I feel that using full color instead emphasizes that a palette of colors beyond greyscale is used/available.

Solution 2:

You can use the word chromatic (second definition):

chromatic (Oxford Dictionaries)

Relating to or produced by color.

Some other dictionaries also include "multichromatic" as an alternative, meaning:

multichromatic (Wiktionary)

involving more than one colour.

I'm pretty sure the average literate American would understand what this word means, although it appears to be favored more in British English, as I couldn't find a definition for multichromatic in a dictionary that spelled "color" in the American spelling.

Solution 3:

Greyscale colours are achromatic colours - so we can call the complementary set chromatic colours.

I think the terms 'greyscale colours' and 'chromatic colours' are reasonable - and moreover are preferable to 'chromatic' and 'achromatic', because these latter two only differ by one letter and are thus prone to confusion & typo errors.

The meaning of the term 'chromatic colours', however, is not self-evident. So I would suggest that using the terms greyscale colours and non-greyscale colours is actually the best option, even if it lacks a bit of elegance.

Solution 4:

For your example usage, don't say "greyscale colors", just say "greyscale". Then color becomes the opposite of greyscale in context: "I am trying to categorize colors used in a program into greyscale and then color".

Solution 5:

The neutral colors black, white, and the infinite shades of grey are called that because they absorb all wavelengths equally.

In HSV they have no saturation so their hue is immaterial. In RGB all three are the same value.

So apparently you want the non-neutral colors. Those are all the colors it takes the three kinds of cones in your eye to see. With only one kind of rod you can see only one kind of color, the neutral kind, the monochromatic ones.