How does color on a computer screen work? I always thought that color was a way that light reflects on different materials/objects. How does this work on a TV/computer screen?
In: Technology
None of the answers so far cover this in ELI5 level.
There are two ways of making color. The one you’re taught in art class is pigment based. This is how light reflects from an object, including paint, clothes, crayons, etc. The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. Red + yellow = orange, yellow + blue = green. You mix all the colors together you get brown/black (true black is hard to do).
Then there’s light-producing objects, not light-reflecting. This includes TV monitors, light bulbs, fire, and the sun and stars. For light-producing things, the primary colors are red, green and blue (RGB). Red + green = yellow, red + 1/2 green + 1/4 blue = orange. You mix all the colors together you get white. You can play around with mixing RGB colors here: [http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs101/image-rgb-explorer.html](http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs101/image-rgb-explorer.html)
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