Primary Color
Primary colors are sets of colors that can be combined to make a useful range of colors. For human applications, three primary colors are usually used, since human color vision is trichromatic.
For additive combination of colors, as in overlapping projected lights or in CRT displays, the primary colors normally used are red, green, and blue. For subtractive combination of colors, as in mixing of pigments or dyes, such as in printing, the primaries normally used are cyan, magenta, and yellow, though the set of red, yellow, blue is popular among artists. See RGB color model, CMYK color model, and RYB color model for more on these popular sets of primary colors.
Any particular choice for a given set of primary colors is derived from the spectral sensitivity of each of the human cone photoreceptors; three colors that fall within each of the sensitivity ranges of each of the human cone cells are red, green, and blue. Other sets of colors can be used, though not all will well approximate the full range of color perception. For example, an early color photographic process, autochrome, typically used orange, green, and violet primaries. However, unless negative amounts of a color are allowed the gamut will be restricted by the choice of primaries.
The combination of any two primary colors creates a secondary color.
The most commonly used additive color primaries are the secondary colors of the most commonly used subtractive color primaries, and vice versa.
Read more about Primary Color: Biological Basis, Additive Primaries, Subtractive Primaries, Psychological Primaries
Famous quotes containing the words primary and/or color:
“The traditional American husband and father had the responsibilities—and the privileges—of playing the role of primary provider. Sharing that role is not easy. To yield exclusive access to the role is to surrender some of the potential for fulfilling the hero fantasy—a fantasy that appeals to us all. The loss is far from trivial.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“The great God endows His children variously. To some he gives intellect—and they move the earth. To some he allots heart—and the beating pulse of humanity is theirs. But to some He gives only a soul, without intelligence—and these, who never grow up, but remain always His children, are God’s fools, kindly, elemental, simple, as if from His palette the Artist of all had taken one color instead of many.”
—Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958)