I know from the art class I took in elementary school that there are primary colors and secondary colors. The primary ones being Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple.
So my question is why do we use red, green, and blue? Wouldn’t it make more sense to do every other color on the spectrum so that all colors in between could be mixed from them? Like Red, Yellow, and Blue?
In: Technology
There are two kinds of color mixing. Mixing colored pigments (like paints) and mixing colored lights don’t work the same way. The two systems of color mixing have different primary colors, and you get different results when you mix, say, red and green in the two systems.
If you mix red and green paint, if you have the exact right shades of red and green, you get black. (In practice, you’ll probably get a brown or dark gray color.) Crayons work the same way as paints. The primary colors here are red, yellow, and blue. As you mix more colors, you generally get darker colors.
If you mix red light and green light, you don’t get black or brown. You get yellow. The primary colors here are red, green, and blue. If you mix all three primary colors of light, you get white light. As you mix more colors, you get lighter colors (because you’re adding more light).
Screens use red, green, and blue as primary colors. Printers use red, yellow, and blue.
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