#additive colors

[gremlinghost]

I am always surprised to see how many people fundamentally don't understand subtractive color palletes. Like they hear that all the colors mix to make white and think that if they mix all of the colors of paints, they'll get white paint. Transversally, people will hear that cmy are primary colors, and then when a digital artist says that red is a primary color, they'll be all up in their case saying it's not, and it's starting to piss me off.

So let's clear things up a little.

Subtractive color palette (CMYK): mixing colors subtracts brightness, meaning the more colors are mixed, the darker it will get. Mixing every color will result in black. the "purest" colors need to be brighter. This is the color spectrum that paints, inks, dyes, and all other physical pigments use.

Additive color palette (RGB): mixing colors adds brightness, meaning the more colors mixed, the brighter it gets. Mixing every color result will result in white. This is the "true" color palette as it is how light waves interact. Only digital palettes can be RGB.

[sciencesideanswers]

Why do colored lights produce shadows of their opposite color?

The short answer is that they don’t. Shadows are simply an absence of light, so in the most basic setup (a single colored light in a dark room) shadows will still be black. However, there is a reason that the shadows look like they’re the opposite color.

The way we perceive color is fluid. Much like the white balance on a camera, our brains can interpret colors differently. The most striking example is wearing colored glasses. Imagine taking a pair of orange goggles and putting them on. At first, all colors would be distorted. White would be orange, and everything else would have an orange tint in addition to its regular color. However, after a few minutes, your eyes will adjust and white will look white again. But then, when you take off the glasses, everything will be blue. This is because your brain has adjusted to see orange as white, so without the tint white looks to be the ‘opposite’ of orange, which is a light blue. Here’s a little more reading on why this happens and here’s the Wikipedia page on eye adaptation, which is the fundamental concept behind it.

Depending on the lighting situation, it’s possible that a similar situation is occurring which makes shadows appear to have a color. For example, if all the lights in a room are orange, your eyes will adjust to make that look more white. Then, when a shadow is formed, because your eyes are adjusted to the orange, it will look blue. 

An interesting experiment with colored shadows can be found here, but this requires using three colored lights and blocking only some of them, meaning it’s not exactly a colored shadow. What you’re really seeing is the lack of a color hitting the surface, or the additive color of the remaining lights. The shadow isn’t the color, the other lights are.

– Admin Noah

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[th2b]

additive colors