
Printers and anyone working with color on paper or another reflective surface can't work with additive primaries. Red + green + blue=white, the whole spectrum. Note that if you project the additive primaries, say, from a spotlight onto a stage, a combination of two will produce a subtractive primary (illustration at right). Multiple 255 times 255 times 255 and how many color combinations do you get? More than 16.7 million, presuming your monitor is capable of showing that many (most modern monitors are capable of this 24-bit, or "true color"). Other colors correspond to a specific voltage combination. Obviously, 0, 0, and 0 will produce black, or absence of color, and 255, 255 and 255 will produce white. These produce color intensity based on a voltage level, from 0 to 255.
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This principle generates color for televisions, computer monitors and movie screens, that is, all projected color.Ĭolor on television and monitors is produced by three color "guns" corresponding to each additive primary. The three colors are projected onto a screen in various intensities to produce all colors. The additive primaries red green and blue generate color by beginning with absence of color, black, to generate all colors. A fourth "primary," black, is used for printed color. Modern color theory is based on three primary colors, projected colors red green and blue, or its printed complements, cyan, magenta, and yellow (that's yellow, hard to read on a white background, no?). The CMYK mode should be used when creating illustrations for print media.COMM 242, Advanced News Photography (Photojournalism) In general, the RGB mode should be used when preparing graphics intended mainly for viewing on computer displays. After a while you will develop an intuitive sense of how these schemes work, how they resemble each other, and how they differ. If you have a paint or draw program such as Corel DRAW! that employs both the RGB and the CMYK schemes, you can investigate these relationships by filling in regions with solid colors using one mode, and examining the equivalent in the other mode. Shades of gray result from the equal (but not maximum) brilliance of R,G, and B, or from equal (but not maximum) concentrations of C, M, and Y. The primary pigments CMY, combined at maximum concentration,produce black. The primary colors RGB, combined at 100-percent brilliance,produce white. These relationships are depicted in the illustration. Any two pure non-black primary pigments, when mixed, produce a substance having the appearance of one of the pure primary colors. The primary pigments and the primary colors are mathematically related.Any two pure radiant primary colors (R, G, or B), when combined,produce radiation having the appearance of one of the pure non-black primary pigments (C, M, or Y). When you see yellow ink on a page, it looks yellow because it absorbs most energy at all visible wavelengths except in the yellow portion of the spectrum (around 600 nanometers), where most of the energy is reflected. Sometimes black (K) is also considered a primary pigment, although black can be obtained by combining pure cyan, magenta, and yellow in equal and large amounts. The primary pigments are cyan (C), magenta (M), and yellow (Y). Pigments, as opposed to colors, represent energy that is not absorbed by a substance such as ink or paint. When you see a red area on a CRT, it looks red because it radiates a large amount of light in the red portion of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum (around 750 nanometers), and much less at other wavelength. The primary colors are red (R), green (G), and blue(B).


Color represents energy radiated by a luminous object such as a cathode ray tube ( CRT) or a light-emitting diode (LED). There is a fundamental difference between color and pigment. The RGB scheme is used mainly for computer displays, while the CMYK model is used for printed color illustrations (hard copy). Many paint and draw programs can make use of either the RGB or the CMYK model. The CMYK pigment model works like an "upside-down"version of the RGB (red, green, and blue) color model.

During the early days of printing, the colors used for Key have been brown, blue, or black - whichever was the cheapest ink to acquire at any given time. The key color in today's printing world is black but it has not always been. The C stands for cyan (aqua), M stands for magenta (pink), Y for yellow, and K for Key. Also see hue, saturation, and brightness.ĬMYK is a scheme for combining primary pigments.
