Some words that come to mind:
Is any of these correct? Any better word?
EDIT:
As some commenters requested, I am adding context.
I am not going to use the word in any specific sentence. I am a programmer and I am trying to categorize colors used in a program into greyscale colors, and then _ (answer here) colors.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
Clearly, there's not going to be one correct answer to this question. My suggestion is to use "greyscale shades" vs. "colors". If I were already locked into "greyscale colors", I'd go with "actual colors".
Fairly clearly black-and-white is not what you want; some kind of “colour” might be.
There is not now, never has been and never, under any circumstances could be anything like an antonym of greyscale, just as there is no antonym of chalk or cheese or grass or green. Greyscale does not form half of any pair, let alone of a pair of opposites.
If this is a purely linguistic question that’s all there is to it.
If not, what are you Posting about?
From what I have learnt about colors, Black, White, and Grey (combination of Black and White) are colors which aren't directly a part of the visible spectrum and thus I'd coin the term "spectral scale" for a range of colors not containing these three.
Spectral colors are the colors that make up rainbows i.e VIBGYOR.
Also, spectral-scale sounds appropriate and satisfying. But, that's just an opinion.
Refer :- Spectral Colors
For your application rgbColors or some form (RGB_Colors, rgbScale) would probably be best suited. HSL/HSV could be used, but I feel that the former is most fitting.
A grayscale color is a fully desaturated color, i.e. a color with zero saturation. The opposite of that, in a technical context, might be a fully saturated color, with maximal saturation. But between these opposites there is a whole range of colors which have neither zero nor full saturation.
Judging from your context, you probably don't want the opposite but the complement (in the set-theoretic meaning). You could describe them as “colors with nonzero saturation”, but that's way harder to understand than “non-grayscale colors”, and less elegant as well, so I wouldn't suggest actually using that.
The terms you suggest, like “natural color” or “true color”, tend to describe a picture which is composed of color from a certain set, with the assumption that a close representation of the colored original is attempted. So while these words may be good to describe the colors used in a picture, I would not use them for a single color. After all, what would a “multi-colored color” be, since each color is by definition exactly that: one color. On the other hand, a “colored color” sounds like a repetition without semantic meaning, similar to wet water. If you call these things “colors”, including the desaturated ones, then they are all “colored”. (You could choose a different convention, and call some of these things “colors” and others “gray scales” or whatever. But then you would have the even harder task of finding a common term to describe the union of both of these. This would quickly become confusing.)
If I had to pick a single non-compound word to describe a single non-grayscale color as such, I'd go for “chromatic”, as already suggested in other answers.
The word pair that comes to mind for me is shade : hue
Where shade refers to greyscale and hue refers to colors
See What’s the Difference between a Hue, Tint, Shade and Tone ?
For your purposes, maybe polychrome would do.
relating to, made with, or decorated in several colors
This is just to point out that chromatic, which has been suggested by several answerers, is used in this context in published literature.
From Digital Color Imaging Handbook:
Hue. Attribute of a visual sensation according to which an area appears to be similar to one of the perceived colors: red, yellow, green, and blue, or to a combination of two of them.
Achromatic color. Perceived color devoid of hue.
Chromatic color. Perceived color possessing a hue.
Equivalent usage is attested here, here, here, here, here, ...
