I always remember learning that the three primary colors are Red, Yellow, and Blue. Many people rather insist that they are Red, Green, and Blue.
When you take paints or markers or something else along those lines, combing RYB will give you all the colors, whereas RGB will not. Furthermore, electronic displays and lights use RGB as their primary colors, not RYB.
So what exactly is the “true” set of primary colors. Or are there just two sets that function differently?
In: Technology
Primary colors are simply any set of colors that can reproduce all other colors by mixing them. The way of mixing defines what colors are primary colors.
In paint the way of mixing is subtractive as each pigment of paint – absorbs – “all but one color” so a red pigment absorbs all light quite good except for red light which is reflected back to you, thus you see the paint as red. So when mixing paint together more colors are absorbed, thus more colors are subtracted, from the color pool.
Due to this behaviour the primary colors of subtractive color mixing of paint in art and design are Red, Yellow and Blue. (This is not the whole spectrum though)
However everything that – emits – light mixes by – adding – colors to the pool. So a red light emits “only in the red” and a blue light “only in the blue”. Thus wenn mixing them together you receive blue and red data. So this way of mixing is – additive – and here the primary colors are Red, Green and Blue.
So to say “those are the primary colors” without mentioning the way of mixing is simply wrong. The definition literally states “any of a group of colours from which all other colours can be obtained by mixing”. Thus there are no “real” or “unreal” primary colors. It simply depends on the way these colors are mixed and if all other colors can be obtained.
So in the end what colors are considered primary depends on the so called “color model”. The most common ones are the paint (subtractive), light (additive) and ink (subtractive) models.
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