like if you wanted to mix paint to get a color from a computer would you do the opposite of what the RGB value is? I’m confused
like if I wanted to take the RBG code R:99, G: 66, B, 33 wouldn’t it look more lightful than if I mixed paint into 1 part blue, 2 part green, 3 part red? how would you paint a color code?
It is the difference between additive mixing and subtractive mixing. When you mix colors on a screen with RGB, you add light. When you mix pigments on a physical medium, you subtract the amount of light reflected (because each paint absorbs most light except the colors it reflects, which are what you see).
As a side note, when mixing in the subtractive color system, your primary colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. That’s why a printer takes CMYK, for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. In case you were wondering, ‘K’ here is black.
K is key. It’s not necessarily black ink, but tends to be when printing on white stock.
If you’re printing on black stock, for instance, you’ll likely have white ink for the key.
Thank you for the correction.
Great explanation. Thank you.
Can you also tell me how a computer monitor makes Yellow when it only has RGB pixels?
Sure! On a spectrum of visible light, yellow has a wavelength between red and green. Therefore, combining red and green, the average wavelength is the same as the wavelength of yellow. In fact, a yellow pixel is really just a pair of red and green pixels on most monitors (except with certain types of expensive monitors in which each pixel has red, green, and blue instead of red, green, or blue).
For reference:
I hope this helps.
One curious thing if you understand this is to think on purple. Purple is blue+red, but like you pointed out 2 colors should give you the average wavelength, which in the case of blue+,red should be green. So why the hell do we see purple as something different? Well, that’s because humans have 3 sensors for colors, roughly corresponding to Red, Green and Blue, triggering both Blue and Red without triggering green at the same time gets interpreted differently than green, even though it shouldn’t. Which means that purple is not a color, but rather a mind trick your brain plays on you.
That makes sense. Thank you. I think the rules between additive and subtractive mixed together in my head and confused me.
I’ve been wondering - how do you make brown? Don’t really see it on the spectrum.
Dark orange, it’s only brown when contrasted with something brighter.
There is a technology connection video that goes into more details.
About 2 parts red to one part green.
red light + green light = yellow light