12/9/2012

Chapter 9: Color Additive Primary Colors

Color mixtures
Additive Mixing
Partitive Mixing 530-nm green
Subtractive Mixing
yellow cyan
Colored Inks and Paint
Watercolors
650-nm red 460-nm blue
CMYK Printing magenta

Halftones

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Additive Mixing: Yellow Display Pixels: Partitive Mixing

What it instead, we make the different colors

coming from separate, very small, very closely
spaced points

You eye cannot see them as separate sources, so

the colors mix and you see the same color. This is
called partitive mixing

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Concept Question: Partitive Mixing Partitive Mixing: Pixels

A computer pixel is composed

of red, green and blue lights. If
the red and green ones are
illuminated, what color does it Un-illuminated pixel
appear from a distance?
a) Green
b) Red
c) Yellow
d) Blue Pixel with red and green
lights illuminated
e) Magenta

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Subtractive Mixing Subtractive Mixing

Suppose we have a range of wavelengths hitting some
In additive mixing, we added the wavelengths that object:
were hitting the eye: say red light and green light

Three things can happen to each wavelength of light:

Reflection: that particular wavelength bounces off the object
What about things like filters and dye pigments? Transmission: that wavelength passes through the object
These mix by subtractive mixing Absorption: that wavelength is soaked up by the object
In general different things happen at different
wavelengths

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Colored Filters Colored Filters

Recall that magenta is the additive mixture of What happens if we layer colored filters?
blue and red
Filters subtract light by absorption or reflection
If a light looks magenta, it means that red and
blue light is reaching our eyes, thus a magenta
filter must transmit blue and red light, and
subtract, by reflection or absorption, green light.
=
= Incident white light Magenta filter Cyan filter Only blue
subtracts green subtracts red gets
through

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Colored Filters Concept Question: Colored Filters

Another example:
=
Incident white light
=
What color makes it through both the cyan and yellow
Incident white light Magenta Yellow Only red filters?
filter subtracts filter subtracts gets a) Red
green blue through
b) Blue
c) Green

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Subtractive Mixing: Primaries Subtractive Mixing: Reflection

Colored filters subtract some colors and transmit
The subtractive primaries
others.
are
Cyan
Magenta Subtractive mixing can also occur when a colored
Yellow surface absorb some colors and reflect others
White in Magenta out
In subtractive mixing, A magenta colored surface
combining complementary absorbs (subtracts) green
and reflects red and blue,
colors produces black thus appeared to be
magenta

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Subtractive Mixing: Reflection Subtractive Mixing: Reflection

The colors of light that are reflected from a
A green surface absorbs (subtracts) red and blue
(magenta), and reflects green surface mix additively when the hit your retina.

The subtractive part of the mixing is the light

White in Green out hitting the surface and part of it being absorbed
or transmitted.

A surface that reflects both red and green light

will appear yellow by additive mixing of the red
and green light that reaches your eyes

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Subtractive Mixing: Real Filters

Earth-orbiting satellites
take pictures of Earth Real filters are non-ideal, they transmit a range of
at different wavelengths, not just one. We can specify which
wavelengths to wavelengths using an intensity distribution curve.
determine the health
of crops and water

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Magenta Filter Transmission Cyan Filter Transmission

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Subtractive Mixing: Colored Light Colored Light: Example

We have so far been assuming that we are Fluorescent light emission Reflectance of a magenta shirt

illuminating our colored filters and surfaces with

uniform white light.

But most light is not uniform white, or even white

at all.

How can we figure out what objects will look like in

non-ideal or non-uniform light?

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Combining Intensity Curves Combining Intensity Curves: Example

To combine two
When illuminated
intensity curves,
by this fluorescent
you multiply the
light, this magenta
curves at each point
shirt will appear
to get the combined
gray (colorless)
curve

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Concept Question Color Mixing: Ink and Paint

The black line is the intensity
distribution curve of a daylight
CFL. Color mixing with ink and pigment is in general, a
The purple line is the reflectance complex mixture of additive and subtractive
curve of a magenta colored mixing.
surface.
What color does the surface
appear to be when illuminated Light rays hitting paint or ink on a piece of paper
with this light? can interact with the pigments in several ways
a) Magenta
b) Red
c) Blue
d) Purple

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Color Mixing: Ink and Paint Color Mixing: Ink and Paint
Some light is reflected from the surface This process only occurs if the ink or paint is at
Some light passes through the ink and reflects least semi transparent, such as watercolors and
from the paper underneath, while the ink absorbs some printing inks.
some wavelengths
The rays from these two processes combine in
the eye, mixing additively

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Watercolors Process Ink Printing

Watercolor is a challenging medium, because the transparent
colors have to be layered carefully to avoid a muddy looking
The transparent inks used to print colored documents
appearance and packaging are called process inks
As light passes through each color layer, more wavelengths are
subtracted, just like layering a set of filters A printer wants to use the best primaries possible to
The light also reflects off the paper underneath, so the create the largest number of colors from the smallest
reflectance curve of the paper itself also subtracts some colors.
number of printing plates.

Each separate color requires a separate printing plate

or roller

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Process Ink Printing Non-ideal Inks

The reason inks cannot be ideal is that they cannot be
The printing primaries are too saturated.
Cyan A narrow reflectance curve (more saturated) reflects
Magenta less overall light, so saturated colors would be very
Yellow dark
Black
Black is necessary because the printing inks are not
ideal, and combining them together does not produce
a true black, but a slightly color-tinged black.
This is also called the CMYK color system

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CMYK Printing CMYK Printing

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CMYK Printing CMYK Printing: Halftones

To avoid having to add even more printing plates or
We have seen that we can generate a range of colors
rollers, printers use a variation of partitive mixing to
by subtractive mixing our CMYK primaries
generate lighter colors

But what it we want to print lighter, less saturated

They simply print less ink in a given area
colors?

This is called half-tone printing, and

Diluting the inks would require a new printing plate
for each color. is common in newspaper and magazine
printing

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Halftones

When ink dots overlap: subtractive mixing

Ink dots next to each other, partitive/additive mixing

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