Question About Color Wheel

[Lunatique]

*EDITED* (to prevent misleading anyone)

[JaysonMartinez]

Hi Lunatique,

Thank you very much for your reply.

Now how do I create colors on the outer circle since there are no neighbourhood color to blend?

Best regards

~JaysonMartinez

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6830/colorwheel.png

[AprilYoung]

Maybe I can help!

RGB colors go up to 255, but there are actually 256 because you count zero as black. Microsoft "medium gray" is 128, 128, 128, but sometimes medium gray reads at 127. Understanding that you're actually dividing a practical 256 instead of 255 will be easier to deal with, with half being 128 and a fourth being 64.

So an answer to your yellow-green tertiary color question is that since red and green make yellow, one hundred percent green and HALF red would make yellow-green. So yellow-green would be R:128 G:255 B:0. But blue and green, which are both primary additive colors (based on lights), would be R:0 G:128 B:128. If you're a painter it's a bit strange to think of yellow as a secondary color! Red and blue are primary so purple is the same deal: R:128 G:0 B:128. Red-orange would be R:255 G:64 B:0. Since you only need a fourth yellow to three fourths red, you only need to add a fourth of green to "yellow it up."

Of course the shortcut would be to go into Photoshop, pick the paint tool and drop a circle of pure orange at 100 percent. Then pick pure red, drop it over the orange at 50 percent opacity and bam, your resulting color is instant red-orange...but I wanted to sort of explain the numbers behind it since that seems like what you were interested in learning about.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b17/_April_Young/colorwheel.jpg

This was done using the 50 percent Photoshop trick.
Blue and Yellow cancel each other out hue-wise since Yellow is RG and blue is B!


Hope that answered some questions,

-April Young

[jfrancis]

If you set your blend mode to multiply you can mix colors 'subtractively.'

http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2009/06/additive_color_1.html

http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/images/gradColorMix.jpg

http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/images/psColorMixing_1.jpg

http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/images/psColorMixing_2.jpg

http://www.digitalartform.com/assets/image-Arithmetic-multiply.jpg

[JaysonMartinez]

Hi everyone,

Thank you very much for the replies.

I would like to make sure, does 'pure' Grey colors composition are r:128, g:128, b:128 in RGB?

Also, what is the color composition of pure Brown, pure Maroon, and pure Gold in RGB?

Thank you very much in advance

~Jayson Martinez

[JaysonMartinez]

I just know that the pure brown color composition is r:128, g:64, b:0 and
the pure maroon color composition is r:128, g:0, b:0.

Now there is only pure gold composition left I need to know.

Thanks in advance

~Jayson Martinez

[Lunatique]

I can't believe it completely skipped my mind that digital color mixing is different from traditional pigment mixing. So sorry about that!

[AprilYoung]

Lunatique: I know what you're talking about. I took RGB for granted for a long time, until I realized how strange it was compared to subtractive color, where yellow is still a primary color. I'm still learning how it works!

[jfrancis]

This is my understanding of the color wheel, in a nutshell. The funny thing is some people will find it obviously true. Others may very well find it obviously false. Here it is:

The additive primaries are Red, Green and Blue. In Photoshop, the blend mode is Linear Dodge (add) - although Screen will work equally well in the case of colors like R, G, and B that have no channels in common.

The 'subtractive' primaries are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. In Photoshop, the blend mode is Multiply. (I actually prefer to call them 'multiplicative,' which is why I keep putting 'subtractive' in quotes.)

The additive primaries are the photographic negative (inverse) complements of the 'subtractive' primaries. That means the complement of Yellow is not Purple, as shown in the OP's wheel above, but the complement of Yellow is Blue.

We tell beginners to color that the 'subtractive' primaries are not Magenta, Yellow and Blue but rather Red, Yellow and Blue, because we don't want to complicate matters with nuanced and unfamiliar colors like Magenta and Cyan.

Historically artists really believed the paint primaries were RYB. Old color wheels reflect this error and put Purple opposite Yellow.

You can be wrong about color and still do great work, because you unconsciously compensate while working, and because RYB is not that bad an approximation.

Red paint is not a primary color of paint because I can go to the store, buy some Magenta and Yellow paint, and mix up a nice, bright Red on my palette.

Magenta paint is a primary color of paint because I cannot buy any paints anywhere for any money that when mixed together will produce a bright, clean Magenta.

I could be wrong about anything I've said above, however, this is what I currently understand.

[jfrancis]

Adobe's kuler (http://kuler.adobe.com/#themes/newest?time=30) Puts Purple opposite Yellow in spite of the fact that the complement of Yellow is Blue.

The reason is their color wheel is designed to make attractive color harmonies. It does not have the purpose of trying to help with color mixing. The wheel has a different purpose.

There are FOUR 'Psychological Primaries' - Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue

The psychological primaries have nothing to do with color mixing, they simply 'feel' like primaries to most people. If you made toy blocks in four simple shapes, those are probably the colors you'd pick.

The human eye is basically sensitive in three areas: R, G and B.

There are many wavelength recipes able to produce the same color. This is why software has a hard time accurately predicting color mixing based on the colors of the mixees.

In the real world with real paint nothing beats real experience.

[AprilYoung]

No wonder the Yellow and blue made gray! :D

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