Printer and painter primary colors. http://web.archive.org/web/20021206152804/www.beer.org/~tpark/color...

Color Theory Page

This is access number to this page.

Printers and artists have different definitions for primary colors. This document contains an analysis and a
resolution for this difference.

Introduction
Additive Primary Colors
Additive Secondary Colors
Subtractive Primary Colors
Process and Painting Primaries
So how do I mix colors then?
Conclusion
Other sites

Introduction
Printers and artists have different definitions for primary colors. The traditionional primary colors that
painters have used are red, yellow, and blue. M odern printing press secondary colors are magenta, yellow,
and cyan. These two primary color systems obviously do not agree. In this document I will explain how the
printing primary colors are derived. I will also show how these colors are related to the primary colors used
by painters, and attempt to show how these colors are related.

Additive Primary Colors

Human vision relies on light sensitive cells in the retina of the eye. There are two basic kinds of sensors.
These are rods and cones. Rods are cells which can work at very low intensity, but cannot resolve sharp
images or color. Cones are cells that can resolve sharp images and color, but require much higher light levels to
work. The combined information from these sensors is sent to the brain and enables us to see.

There are three types of cone. Red cones are sensitive to red light, green cones are sensitive to green light, and
blue cones are sensitive to blue light. The perception of color depends on an imbalance between the
stimulation level of the different cell types.

Additive color processes, such as television, work by having the capability to generate an image composed of
red, green, and blue light. Since the intensity information for each of the three colors is preserved, the image
color is preserved as well. The spectral distribution of the image will probably be wrong, but if the degree of
intensity for each of the primary colors is correct, the image will appear to be the right color. Red, green, and
blue are the additive primary colors, because they correspond to the red, green, and blue cones in the eye.

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Printer and painter primary colors. http://web.archive.org/web/20021206152804/www.beer.org/~tpark/color...

Additive Secondary Colors

Additive secondary colors are composed of two of the primary colors. These colors are shown in table 1.

Subtractive Primary Colors

Subtractive color processes work by blocking out parts of the spectrum. The idea of subtractive color is to
reduce the amount of undesired color reaching the eye. If, for example, you had a yellow image, you would
want to have a dye that would let red and green reach the eye, and block out blue. The additive secondaries
become the subtractive primaries, because each of the additive secondaries will reflect two of the additive
primaries, and absorb one of the additive primaries.
Additive Secondaries/Subtractive Primaries Absorption Chart

Color Reflects Absorbs

Yellow Red and Green Blue
Magenta Red and Blue Green
Cyan Green and Blue Red

With this information, if we wanted red, we would mix magenta and yellow. M agenta would absorb green, and
yellow would absorb blue, leaving only red to be reflected back to the eye. For black, a combination of all
three would be used, which should block out all light in theory. Printers use black as well, since the dyes used
in printing are not perfect, and some light from other parts of the spectrum gets through.

[SUBTRACTIVE COLOR M AP IM AGE]

Process and Painting Primaries

True cyan and magenta have not been historically available. The blue pigments that are typically available
reflect a certain percentage of green. This percentage is not as high as with true cy an, but it is still there. With
this information, and using red, yellow and blue as our primary colors, table 4 shows what we could mix.

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Printer and painter primary colors. http://web.archive.org/web/20021206152804/www.beer.org/~tpark/color...

With the possible exception of certain pointillist techniques, process primaries cannot be mixed from other
colors because adding different paints only subtracts from the light reflected back to the viewer. Painting
primaries can be mixed from the process primaries. Since a primary color is one that cannot be mixed, the
process primaries are the ones that can be considered true primary colors.

If the process primaries cyan and magenta were not available, (and for standard oil p aint colors, this is
historically the case) the next best primary colors to use would be red, yellow, and blue. M any colors can be
mixed with these three colors and it is not possible to mix these colors without cyan and magenta.

So how do I mix colors then?

If you want to mix genuine paints there are a couple of strategies that you can use to mix reasonably clean
colors. If you have a paint which is reasonably close to what you want, try mixing it with a color that is not
too far away from it on the color wheel. If you mix with colors that are far away, you will tend to get darker
colors.

Conclusion
M agenta, yellow and cyan are the true process primary colors. This agrees with what can be mixed, as well as
with the additive primary color system. In the absence of magenta and cyan, red and blue can sort of be used
as primary colors, although not all colors can be mixed.

Other References
The people at hunterlab have equipment that can do quantitative analysis of color, so you may want to check
this out if you're looking for reproducable results.

Back to Ted's home page.

Ted Park, tpark@beer.org

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