posted
I thought this might be a good place to ask. I've taken college level art courses, but apparently not enough to have studied how color works in detail.
Now, I know that the primary colors of light are red, blue, and green, and that these are the only colors most of us can pick up. Everything else is a combination of that. I also understand that the primary colors of pigment are red, blue, and yellow, and that supposedly mixing them provides the secondary colors of purple, green, and orange. Heck, I've "known" that since I played with play dough as a kid.
But I always wondered why mixing the primary colors gave you muted or "ugly" secondary colors. I remember one painting instructor informing me that there is no "true red" in pigment. There are warm reds and cool reds. If you want a good orange, use warm red. If you want a good purple, use a cool red. I assume this is somewhat true for all the primary colors of pigment. But why? Blue and yellow in particular seemed to make the crappiest green. It didn't *look* green to me.
The other day I was messing around with markers and colored pencils (didn't have access to enough colors of paint) and came to the conclusion that using the secondary colors of *light*--magenta, cyan, and yellow--you actually get better secondary colors of pigment. Or so it seemed to me with the limited resources I had. The green was far better, the purple was too. The orange seemed about the same.
I concluded that the color wheel is just plain wrong; that it is a sad over-simplification of a much more complex system.
So this leads me to ask, how did we come up with our "primary colors of pigment" to begin with? Where does our color wheel originate? And if it is a bunch of huey, where can I go to learn about how color in pigment *really* works?
You see, I have dabbled in art all my life. But I have never gotten seriously, deeply into it. And I haven't done all that much with color. But someday I would like to. And because I am curious, I want to understand how color works *now*.
Color on the computer is easy, or rather, "light" color is easy. It makes sense. It is pigment color that confuses me so much.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Most good graphic designers (and good computer printers) use the the Cyan/Magenta/Yellow system, I believe, probably for the same reasons you pointed out.
Light doesn't have "primary" colors, intrinsically. It is true that our eyes react to Red/Green/Blue or less (color blindness), and occassionally more (there is some research out there on "tetrachromats"), because our cones fire on these colors... But it is a scale, not discreet (slightly different frequencies of red trigger different rates of response in the eye, for instance).
I don't know much about the art side of things, but I did take a "Sense & Perception" intro psych (or was it neuro?) class in college.
Posts: 7021 | Registered: Nov 1999
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Do all creatures that see in color have RGB cones? (I've heard about tetrachromats--wish I were one! ) If they didn't, I wonder how it would change their perception of color?
From what you've said there, it sounds like cyan, magenta, and yellow are the "true primary colors of pigment"--as I was suspecting. >_>
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I don't know, but I would guess that there isn't anything intrinsic about RGB that would make it necessary that we share it, but evolution could be such that those who see in color all share a common ancestor that happened to have these types of cones.
posted
Learned this in psych class. In light, we see red, green, and blue as our "primary colors". However, the 'opposite' colors are the primary colors in pigment. I use quotes because they're not TECHNICALLY the opposite colors. Because when mixing pigment colors, instead of like with light, where you add red, green, and blue to make white, when you mix paint you SUBTRACT colors. Because you're adding the filters that show you that color. To see red, your paint needs to filter out every other color. If you add the all-but-red-filtered-out to the all-but-blue-filtered-out, you get an all-but-purple-filtered-out type color.
So the reason that cyan, magenta, and yellow are the primary colors in paint is the same reason that red, green, and blue are the primary colors in light. Because cyan filters out red specifically, magenta filters out green specifically, and yellow filters out blue specifically.
posted
There are also the parameters of value (how much "black" is in a color) brightness (how much "white" is in a color) and hue (how much "color" is in a color.)
Another interesting model is the color solid. It is a 3 dimensional thingy with bright at the top and dark at the bottom. It has a bulge going up on yellow and a bulge going down on purple.
An interesting linguistic offshoot is that not all languages have names for each color. Let's face it, a lot of english speakers only have 5 or 6, Binney & Smith's box of 96 crayons notwithstanding. In languages with only 3 words for color, they tend to be black, white and red. In languages with 4, the fourth color is blue and green. It is funny because in the 3 word languages the people will say blue and yellow are "red" but red is more "red". It wasn't clear to me whether the blue/green folks went for something in between blue and green, or if they thought blue and green were equally "blue/green."
My husband said we don't really see yellow, that it is the absence of light feedback. Which seems really freaky to me, so I don't know if I believe that. But I just think it's amazing that colors work the way they do, and that we can see them. You can load up what amounts to a microtexture in a pen and rub it on whatever you want and it will reflect back the relevant wavelength.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:So the reason that cyan, magenta, and yellow are the primary colors in paint
I think the question is why is it that we are taught the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue, when in reality they are magenta, yellow, and cyan?
Posts: 751 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Yeah, Japanese used to use the word aoi for both blue and green. Midori (the word they now use for green) is the word they used for "grass colored."
Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Because it's easier for kids to remember blue, red, and yellow? Magenta, yellow, and cyan are mancolor red, yellow, and blue.
Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Bok is absolutely right - the primary colors are CMY, and the whole red blue yellow thing is a LIE! A filthy LIE!
(well, maybe it's a misunderstanding or an oversimplification, but for my intents and purposes, it's a LIE!)
This page has a pretty good basic explanation of how CMYK relates to RGB - there's actually not a fundamentally different set of rules for light and pigment - the two are related.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
It's not only easier to teach kids the "primary" colors that aren't; as single colors, they tend to be more striking to the eye.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
This is one of my favorite soapbox topics, beverly.
The current color wheel that we're all taught is really a relic of the Renaissance. Better technology has taught us that the primary colors of the subtractive system are cyan, magenta, and yellow, but for some reason, this doesn't seem to be common knowledge outside of the printing and graphic design worlds. Even my color theory teacher in college botched it, which really frustrated me.
quote:There are also the parameters of value (how much "black" is in a color) brightness (how much "white" is in a color) and hue (how much "color" is in a color.)
Actually, the usual features are value (how light or dark a color is), saturation (how intense or washed-out a color is), and hue (where on the spectrum the color lies).
quote:In languages with 4, the fourth color is blue and green.
I thought it was yellow or green, but I could be wrong. I believe English has one of the largest color vocabulary systems, with something like eleven basic colors. Let's see: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, grey, black, white, brown, and possibly pink. I think that's right, anyway.
*high-fives Annie*
rivka: I'm not sure I'd agree. I find cyan, magenta, and yellow quite striking.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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With pigments, when you mix colors you are using a subtractive color model. With light, when you mix colors you are using an additive color model. Subtractive color models result in darker colors as you add pigments, while additive color models result in brighter colors as you add light. If you take two color transparencies and overlap them while projecting a light through them the resulting color that is projected on the screen will be different than if you took paints of the same colors and mixed them in equal amounts on a canvas. In the publishing industry we use CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and blacK) to describe the colors that go on the paper. In computer graphics programming we use RGBA (Red, Green, Blue, and Alpha) to describe the colors that go on the screen. The Alpha value in computer graphics is a transparency value. The reason that two different sets of values are used has to do with the the color model used for the medium. Pigments of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow can be mixed to create any color in a print medium except, I believe white. Black is usually done with a pure black pigment instead of mixing the other three together, hence the K value in CMYK. In computer graphics Red, Green, and Blue light can be mixed together to make any color except black. The trancperancy value, Alpha, can be used to mix the colors of different layers into what is shown on the screen.
If you are taking art classes I would reccomend looking into a Color Theory class.
Posts: 148 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:So the reason that cyan, magenta, and yellow are the primary colors in paint is the same reason that red, green, and blue are the primary colors in light. Because cyan filters out red specifically, magenta filters out green specifically, and yellow filters out blue specifically.
That is pretty much the conclusion I came to! That light adds colors while pigment subtracts or filters it. But it bugged me that everyone teaches the color wheel as being "red, blue, yellow" when it's not!
Annie, thank you! I feel vindicated now! And I refuse to teach this lie any further. I have taught art lessons to children in the past, and I may do so again. I will teach them the TRUTH!
Jon Boy, I think it is going to be a soapbox topic for me from now on. Let the scales of darkness fall from our eyes, and let the rising generation be raised in light ant truth!
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Welcome to the club. Maybe we should start a revolution or something. The first to go is the Primary song!
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
For years, I thought the "Primary Colors" song meant that those were the theme colors of Primary (the children's organization in the LDS church). When my fourth grade art teacher taught us the Primary colors, I was shocked. I had no idea she was Mormon too!
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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I think it's cool that you sat down and played with colors to figure this out for yourself, Beverly. Posts: 1903 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Woah... this is totally blowing my mind... I had no idea that cyan, magenta, and yellow were the real primary colors.. or that red, blue, and green were teh real secondary colors (talking pigment here).
This is totally messing with everything I've ever believed in!
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Beverly, I'm impressed that you figured this out yourself. Very cool.
For more than you ever wanted to know about color spaces, the wikipedia article is very good. One interesting and odd fact about the RGB color space is that it's not quite linear: adding two RGB colors in the physical world will appear slightly different from the RGB color you get by adding the individual coordinates. For the most accurate color transformations (needed for printing photos and high quality photo editing) everything is converted using the CIELAB color space.
Another odd effect of color perception is metamerism, where two different mixtures of frequencies of light can appear to be the same color.
Color is weird. It's all tied to perception, which is one slippery eel. Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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posted
Well, indigo was never part of the color wheel to begin with, so yes, Roy G. Biv is meaningless.
A rainbow produced by pure white light should be red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and magenta. However, real rainbows are produced by yellowish light scattering through a bluish atmosphere, so the colors aren't perfect.
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"It was red and yellow and green and brown And scarlet and black and ochre and peach And ruby and olive and violet and fawn And lilac and gold and chocolate and mauve And cream and crimson and silver and rose And azure and lemon and russet and grey And purple and white and pink and orange And red and yellow and green and brown and Scarlet and black and ochre and peach And ruby and olive and violet and fawn And lilac and gold and chocolate and mauve And cream and crimson and silver and rose And azure and lemon and russet and grey And purple and white and pink and orange And blue"
I love Tim Rice.
Posts: 786 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Considering the value of the color wheel itself, whether or not indigo was ever part of it is immaterial.
Roy G. Biv, or at least the idea of seven distinct colors, comes from Newton's Opticks, so at least there's some historical significance. Color as an attribute of light is continuous, so in this sense there is no real meaning to the Roy G. Biv colors. But the tendency in human perception is to name colors, and in pretty consistent ways. Newton's system of seven colors is evidence of that tendency.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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