Definition: Additive Color Mixing
Additive color mixing is the addition of waves from the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum to create a color within the visible range of color. This visible range is what humans can perceive as colors. This color mixing is used by your television, computer moniter, HTML colors, etc. This wave stimulates the rods and cones in your eye to make the brain see the proper color.
Definition: Primary Colors and Secondary Colors
There are three types of rods and cones in your eye. These are the primary colors of light that we can see. They are Red, Green, and Blue. These three primary colors mix to for three secondary colors, Yellow, Cyan, and Magenta. Combinations of these colors produce all of the colors that we can see with the naked eye.
Although these colors can represent all of the possible colors that we can see, these colors will not look the same if you mix alight quantities of Red, Green, and Blue pigments. By adding 100% of the three primary colors of light the resulting wave will be the color white, but adding 100% of the three primary color of pigments the resulting color will be black. Why is this?
This happens because pigments mix differently than light does therefore you end up with a totally different color than the light. This mixing method is called subtractive color mixing.
Definition: Subtractive Color Mixing
Subtractive color mixing is the addition and blending of pigments to achieve a desired color on paper. The primary colors of subtractive color mixing are the secondary colors of additive color mixing, Yellow, Cyan, and Magenta. The secondary colors of subtractive color mixing are Red, Green, and Blue. So why are they opposite?
You can see these relationships in the java applet at the bottom of this page. There is an additive color mixer panel and a subtractive color mixer panel. You can set premixed colors using the dropdown menu or make your own using the slidebars and text boxes. Explore the differ ences in color mixings using this tool.
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