So I’ve been seeing a lot about these colors that aren’t supposed to exist apparently? Like magenta, stygian blue, etc and I kind of get what’s going on but also kind of don’t? I’ve seen explainations of this on the internet before but never fully understood, so if anyones able to help with that I’d appreciate it. Don’t want a watered down explaination (I like technical stuff), just a more understandable and approachabe one
In: Physics
The way Eyes are explained is usually over simplifed. Where you have red,green and blue cones and you detect each like a camera sensor.
turns out that isn’t real, and sometimes two colors will have the same wavelength or we see an assumed color based on a wavelength NOT hitting a cone or we have colors precived as one color but activating the “wrong” cone. Because actually vision is a bunch of messy biological goop.
There are two ways to define color:
Light spectrum/wavelengths (science)
Pigment (art)
If you search; not understanding color; is a surpringly common topic
Your eyes have receptors called cone cells that respond to light. Human eyes have three different types of these receptors (unless you are color blind), each of which is sensitive to different wavelengths of light. The color you perceive depends on how much these three receptors are activated.
These cone cells, when exposed to bright colored light for a long time, can become “fatigued” and less sensitive. Then, when the bright color is removed, you can end up seeing a negative of the color you were looking at. For example, if you stare at a red screen for a few minutes, if you then look at a white object you’ll see blue because the cells that are sensitive to red have become desensitized and respond to the white light less than they usually would.
In some cases, the colors that you can perceive in this way, do not correspond to any “real” color – i.e, there is no combination of light frequencies that would activate those cells in the same way. No light source can have that color, no object could be painted that color.
[This image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Chimerical-color-demo.svg) has some examples. Zoom in on one of the squares to the left, stare directly at the cross for about 30 seconds, then stare at the neighbouring square. The squares on the right show roughly what it should look like, but not exactly, because it is impossible to actually show that “color” on a computer display.
The first thing to note is that “real” colors correspond to specific wavelengths of light. Photons at 700 nanometers will strike your retina and activate the receptors that are sensitive to that wavelength, and then your brain says “red!” So red is a “real” color because there are specific wavelengths that are red.
It’s possible to lay out [the entire spectrum of colors that map to specific wavelengths](https://www.thoughtco.com/the-visible-light-spectrum-2699036)–all of these are “real” colors and you’ll recognize the rainbow there (sort of). But you’ll also notice that there are a whole bunch of colors missing. Those are colors that our brain makes up to explain confusing signals, which you’re here calling “impossible colors.”
When light from the same source hits the retina and activates *both* red and blue receptors, your brain needs some way to show you reddish blue. So it invents magenta so you can perceive something.
To make the whole thing even a bit messier, even “real” colors involve some degree of brain legerdemain. You’re probably aware that we have three color receptors in our eyes: red, green, and blue. Whence then orange, yellow, and violet? (Purple, it should be noted, is one of those “impossible” colors although I couldn’t begin to distinguish between it and violet personally.) Turns out your color receptors don’t *just* perceive the colors for which they’re named. They cover a little bit to either side, even overlapping each others’ territory a bit. And, weirdly, Blue kind of “wraps around” and activates the red receptors a little bit. So when violet light–a discrete wavelength–hits the retina it activates the blue receptors and also a little bit of the red receptors, so your brain interprets that as violet.
Let’s think of sound. Imagine a flute. Imagine the flutist plays a single low pitched sustained sound. Can you hear it? Great. Now imagine the flutist plays a single high pitched sustained sound. You’re doing great!
Now it gets tricky! Imagine two flutists, one playing the low pitched sound and one the high pitched sound. The result is NOT a single medium pitched sound, but rather a mishmash of two sounds that couldn’t have been produced with a single flute. You need at least two, and that’s why it’s a secondary sound.
The color magenta is like that. A blue light beam and a red light beam hitting your eyes just right. Just like the two sounds didn’t make a medium sound, the two light beams don’t make a green of yellow light. They make a mishmash color that couldn’t have been produced with a single light beam. The color is called magenta, and because you need at least two light beams to produce it, it is a secondary color!
As people said “real” colors are specific wavelengths of light and “impossible” colors are mixtures.
I find the whole thing incredibly stupid.
Colors only exist because our eyes can detect them, there are plenty of other wavelengths of light.
There is no consensus of how the color red looks (other than a specific frequency of light and “it looks red to me”).
Did you know pizza is “impossible”! It doesn’t actually exist. It’s actually a mix of dough, tomato sauce and cheese.
Magenta and pinks in general are what you get when you mix purples and reds.
In school, colors are generally presented as a wheel, with each color smoothly blended into the next. In real life though, color is created by waves of light and the wavelength determines the color. The shortest visible wavelengths look like purple and the longest ones look like red. You can’t just mix short and long wavelengths together though, medium wavelengths look like orange, yellow, green and blue.
Basically, the spectrum of color is linear, not circular, so how can you make a new color out of the two opposite ends?
Latest Answers