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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
Read more about this topic: Yellower, In Science, Light, Optics and Colorimetry
Famous quotes containing the words yellow, color, printing, computer and/or screen:
“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)
“The pills are a mother, but better,
every color and as good as sour balls.
I’m on a diet from death.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The printing press was at first mistaken for an engine of immortality by everybody except Shakespeare.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.”
—Robert M. Pirsig (b. 1928)
“We like the chase better than the quarry.... And those who philosophize on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase, which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)