A lighting system including a light source, a means of collecting and focusing light from the light source, an aperture, a filter module containing at least one color filter, and an image lens. A light beam from the light source is focused through the aperture to define the image to be projected. The aperture is positioned upstream of the color filter, with the filter and the image lens being deployed in the area of the light beam where the diameter is at a minimum. The filter elements used in the filter module are two stage filters, having a first stage for a pastel level of a particular filter color, and a second stage for a saturated level of the subject color. Each stage has a gradient segment and a solid color segment. The result is a filter element with four regions that blend into each other.