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
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.
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