Why do printers have CMYK ink instead of RYB & black ink?
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Mixing lights is an additive process. Lets say in a dark room with white walls, if you point a red, blue or green light at a wall, you will either get red, blue or green. However if you begin combining the lights by pointing them at the same spot, the resulting lit area will come closer to white, with white being a combination of all three.
Mixing paints is a subtractive process where adding pigments or colours to the white surface takes you further away from white. If you were to add equal amounts of red blue and green together you get a yucky brown. The best combination of colours to mix for the broadest range of hues are cyan, magenta and yellow, with black to get to the darkest shades of the colour range.
Funnily enough the secondary colours (equal mix of two primary colours) in the additive colour space turn out to be the primary colours of the subtractive space, with blue and green making cyan, red and green making yellow, and red and blue making magenta.
Mixing lights is an additive process. Lets say in a dark room with white walls, if you point a red, blue or green light at a wall, you will either get red, blue or green. However if you begin combining the lights by pointing them at the same spot, the resulting lit area will come closer to white, with white being a combination of all three.
Mixing paints is a subtractive process where adding pigments or colours to the white surface takes you further away from white. If you were to add equal amounts of red blue and green together you get a yucky brown. The best combination of colours to mix for the broadest range of hues are cyan, magenta and yellow, with black to get to the darkest shades of the colour range.
Funnily enough the secondary colours (equal mix of two primary colours) in the additive colour space turn out to be the primary colours of the subtractive space, with blue and green making cyan, red and green making yellow, and red and blue making magenta.
Mixing lights is an additive process. Lets say in a dark room with white walls, if you point a red, blue or green light at a wall, you will either get red, blue or green. However if you begin combining the lights by pointing them at the same spot, the resulting lit area will come closer to white, with white being a combination of all three.
Mixing paints is a subtractive process where adding pigments or colours to the white surface takes you further away from white. If you were to add equal amounts of red blue and green together you get a yucky brown. The best combination of colours to mix for the broadest range of hues are cyan, magenta and yellow, with black to get to the darkest shades of the colour range.
Funnily enough the secondary colours (equal mix of two primary colours) in the additive colour space turn out to be the primary colours of the subtractive space, with blue and green making cyan, red and green making yellow, and red and blue making magenta.
We are essentially using *light* blue instead of blue and *light* red intead of red because when you combine dyes, **the color can only get darker.** So we use lighter variants of those “primary” colors we were taught in grade school so we can capture more of those lighter colors when printing [(which will STILL fall short of the RGB gamut)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/RGB_and_CMYK_comparison.png).
Not only do the dyes only get darker, but the lightness is also limited by how bright white a sheet of paper can be. Even the brightest sheet falls far short of the bright light RGB we stare into on our screens.
We are essentially using *light* blue instead of blue and *light* red intead of red because when you combine dyes, **the color can only get darker.** So we use lighter variants of those “primary” colors we were taught in grade school so we can capture more of those lighter colors when printing [(which will STILL fall short of the RGB gamut)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/RGB_and_CMYK_comparison.png).
Not only do the dyes only get darker, but the lightness is also limited by how bright white a sheet of paper can be. Even the brightest sheet falls far short of the bright light RGB we stare into on our screens.
Because RYB are really the primary colors. It’s cyan, magenta, and yellow. Pigments add together differently than if you were to just partiotion the color wheel. When teaching about colors to kids though, it’s easier just to say red blue and yellow, since those are the colors of the rainbow that they learn. Usually you use paint to mix colors together with, but with printing it’s laying colors on top of each other so the wavelengths of light that are reflected are added together to create another combined color. This is how you might combine colors of light to create other colors, such as on a stage for theater.
We are essentially using *light* blue instead of blue and *light* red intead of red because when you combine dyes, **the color can only get darker.** So we use lighter variants of those “primary” colors we were taught in grade school so we can capture more of those lighter colors when printing [(which will STILL fall short of the RGB gamut)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/RGB_and_CMYK_comparison.png).
Not only do the dyes only get darker, but the lightness is also limited by how bright white a sheet of paper can be. Even the brightest sheet falls far short of the bright light RGB we stare into on our screens.
Because RYB are really the primary colors. It’s cyan, magenta, and yellow. Pigments add together differently than if you were to just partiotion the color wheel. When teaching about colors to kids though, it’s easier just to say red blue and yellow, since those are the colors of the rainbow that they learn. Usually you use paint to mix colors together with, but with printing it’s laying colors on top of each other so the wavelengths of light that are reflected are added together to create another combined color. This is how you might combine colors of light to create other colors, such as on a stage for theater.
Because RYB are really the primary colors. It’s cyan, magenta, and yellow. Pigments add together differently than if you were to just partiotion the color wheel. When teaching about colors to kids though, it’s easier just to say red blue and yellow, since those are the colors of the rainbow that they learn. Usually you use paint to mix colors together with, but with printing it’s laying colors on top of each other so the wavelengths of light that are reflected are added together to create another combined color. This is how you might combine colors of light to create other colors, such as on a stage for theater.
Because Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK) can be combined to create colours on a piece of paper. Red, Green and Blue (RGB), on the other hand, are be used to combine colours on a screen. CMYK is about **reflecting** light into our eyes by using ink that absorbs the right wavelengths, while RGB is about **emitting** light directly. This is a very important distinction, because there are different rules when mixing colours.
There is no such thing as black light, which is why RGB has no “K” in it. Black would be the LED’s in your screen turning off and returning to their base colour, which is a dark tone that feels like black when it stands in contrast with light around it. However, there is something like black ink on a piece of paper, which is an object that absorbs all wavelengths of light at the same time. The deeper the black, the less light it reflects.
Perfect white on a piece of paper, on the other hand, is a reflection of all wavelengths of light at the same time. But you don’t get that by throwing cyan, magenta and yellow ink together. On paper it’s the opposite. You throw their absorbing properties together to get black, which is why these colours are used specifically.
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