

Small red, green, and blue elements (with controllable brightness) in electronic displays mix additively from an appropriate viewing distance to synthesize compelling colored images. The original monochromatic primaries of the wavelengths of 435.8 nm ( violet), 546.1 nm ( green), and 700 nm (red) were used in this application due to the convenience they afforded to the experimental work. Īdditive mixing of coincident spot lights was applied in the experiments used to derive the CIE 1931 colorspace (see color space primaries section). Additivity relies on assumptions of the color matching context such as the match being in the foveal field of view, under appropriate luminance, etc. Additive mixing is sometimes described as "additive color matching" to emphasize the fact the predictions based on additivity only apply assuming the color matching context. The principles of additive color mixing are embodied in Grassmann's laws. If the intensity of the purple spotlight was doubled it could be matched by doubling the intensities of both the red and blue spotlights that matched the original purple. : 17–22 For example, a purple spotlight on a dark background could be matched with coincident blue and red spotlights that are both dimmer than the purple spotlight. The perception elicited by multiple light sources co-stimulating the same area of the retina is additive, i.e., predicted via summing the spectral power distributions (the intensity of each wavelength) of the individual light sources assuming a color matching context. Additive mixing explains how light from these colored elements can be used for photorealistic color image reproduction. Additive mixing of light Ī photograph of the red, green, and blue elements (subpixels) of an LCD. In physics, the three primary colors are typically red, green and blue, after the different types of photoreceptor pigments in the cone cells. No set of real colorants or lights can mix all possible colors, however. Descriptions of primary colors come from areas including philosophy, art history, color order systems, and scientific work involving the physics of light and perception of color.Īrt education materials commonly use red, yellow, and blue as primary colors, sometimes suggesting that they can mix all colors. The choice of primary colors has changed over time in different domains that study color. The concept of primary colors has a long, complex history. Primary pigments or light sources are selected for a given application on the basis of subjective preferences as well as practical factors such as cost, stability, availability etc.

Sets of color space primaries are generally arbitrary, in the sense that there is no one set of primaries that can be considered the canonical set. Phenomenological accounts of primary colors, such as the psychological primaries, have been used as the conceptual basis for practical color applications even though they are not a quantitative description in and of themselves.

Primaries of some color spaces are complete (that is, all visible colors are described in terms of their primaries weighted by nonnegative primary intensity coefficients) but necessarily imaginary (that is, there is no plausible way that those primary colors could be represented physically, or perceived). Color space primaries are precisely defined and empirically rooted in psychophysical colorimetry experiments which are foundational for understanding color vision. Primary colors can also be conceptual (not necessarily real), either as additive mathematical elements of a color space or as irreducible phenomenological categories in domains such as psychology and philosophy. Perceptions associated with a given combination of primary colors can be predicted by an appropriate mixing model (e.g., additive, subtractive) that reflects the physics of how light interacts with physical media, and ultimately the retina. This is the essential method used to create the perception of a broad range of colors in, e.g., electronic displays, color printing, and paintings. Other electronic color display technologies ( LCD, Plasma display, OLED) have analogous sets of primaries with different emission spectra.Ī set of primary colors or primary colours (see spelling differences) consists of colorants or colored lights that can be mixed in varying amounts to produce a gamut of colors.

The emission spectra of the three phosphors that define the additive primary colors of a CRT color video display.
