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Yellow in Color Printing and On A Computer Screen

In color printing, yellow is one of the three colors of ink, along with magenta and cyan, which can be overlaid in the right combination, along with black, to print any full color image. (See the CMYK color model).

The yellow on a color television or computer screen is created in a completely different way; by combining green and red light at the right level of intensity. (See RGB color model).

In technical terms, electric yellow' is the most intense yellow representable in 8-bit RGB color model; yellow is a secondary color in an additive RGB space.

The measured light spectrum from yellow pixels on a typical computer display is complex, and very unlike the reflectance spectrum of a yellow object such as a banana.

Process yellow (also known as pigment yellow, printer's yellow or canary yellow) is one of the three colors typically used as subtractive primary colors, along with magenta and cyan. The CMYK system for color printing is based on using four inks, one of which is a yellow color. This is in itself a standard color, and a fairly narrow range of yellow inks or pigments are used. Process yellow is based on a colorant that reflects the preponderance of red and green light, and absorbs most blue light, as in the reflectance spectra shown in the figure on the lower right.

Because of the characteristics of paint pigments and use of different color wheels, painters traditionally regard the complement of yellow as the color indigo or blue-violet.

Process yellow is not an RGB color, and there is no fixed conversion from CMYK primaries to RGB. Different formulations are used for printer's ink, so there can be variations in the printed color that is pure yellow ink.

The first recorded use of canary yellow as a color name in English was in 1789.

  • Color printing typically uses ink of four colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black). When CMY “primaries” are combined at full strength, the resulting “secondary” mixtures are red, green, and blue

  • Mixing all three theoretically results in black, but imperfect ink formulations do not give true black, which is why an additional K component is needed.

  • An example of color printing from 1902. Combining images in yellow, magenta and cyan creates a full-color picture. This is called the CMYK color model.

  • On a computer display, yellow is created by combining green and red light at the right intensity on a black screen.This is called the RGB color model.

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Famous quotes containing the words yellow in, yellow, color, printing, computer and/or screen:

    Visions of half the world burned black
    And the sun shrunken yellow in smoke.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,
    The fire got out through crannies in the stove
    And danced in yellow wrigglers on the ceiling,
    As much at home as if they’d always danced there.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; so painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and as I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.
    Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)

    The End?
    —Theodore Simonson. Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr.. End title card, The Blob, printed on screen at the end of the movie (1958)