There are no colors that can mix into primary colors, but how can a color form if it’s not mixed with other colors?

Question

I don’t get it.

In: 3

Answer 1

Only one part of your question makes sense: “How does color form?”

Color is how humans perceive different light spectra. Your eyes plus brain see color images via three types of light receptor cells in your eyes, called cones. Each type of cone is sensitive to light in different ways, with different sensitivity to each frequency of light. It’s the amount of excitation of the three types of cones that make the color.

Primary colors are merely colors selected such that different mixtures of them can produce a sufficiently large range of colors. But the premise of your question is wrong. Primary colors *can* be created by the mixture of different colors. Moreover, the selection of primary colors is somewhat arbitrary. It needn’t be red, green, and blue (for light), or cyan, magenta, and yellow (for pigments and dyes).

Answer 2

Only one part of your question makes sense: “How does color form?”

Color is how humans perceive different light spectra. Your eyes plus brain see color images via three types of light receptor cells in your eyes, called cones. Each type of cone is sensitive to light in different ways, with different sensitivity to each frequency of light. It’s the amount of excitation of the three types of cones that make the color.

Primary colors are merely colors selected such that different mixtures of them can produce a sufficiently large range of colors. But the premise of your question is wrong. Primary colors *can* be created by the mixture of different colors. Moreover, the selection of primary colors is somewhat arbitrary. It needn’t be red, green, and blue (for light), or cyan, magenta, and yellow (for pigments and dyes).