Introduction to Color Types

Screen colors are made out of three color components, or channels:

                   

                     Red                Green                Blue

 

The amount of each component in any screen color or shade is given in units from 0 (= no component of this color channel) to 255 (= full complement of this color channel).

 

The commonly used shorthand for expressing screen colors is:

                  Color = RGB(red component, green component, blue component)

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Thus the color Yellow will be expressed as: RGB(255, 255, 0)

meaning that it is made up of the full complement of the red channel together with the full complement of the green channel and no blue complement at all.

 

Note that if you mix paint colors red and green the result will not be the color Yellow .... but more about that when we discuss Print colors.

 

Using the same example of making the screen color Yellow, the color Light Yellow will be expressed as RGB(125, 125, 0).

 

Here we are using the commonly used red, green blue notation and this shows a mixture of half-strength red with half-strength green to produce light (i.e. half-strength) yellow.

 

As Newton showed in his prism experiments with light, mixing full-strength red, green and blue will produce White,

           i.e.  RGB(255, 255, 255) = White

 

By the same token, an absence of color will produce Black, 

           i.e.  RGB(0, 0, 0,) = Black

 

Print colors are made out of a different set of three color components, or inks:

                   

Cyan                Magenta                Yellow

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Print color intensity is very often expressed in units from 0 (= no component) to 100 (= maximum strength).

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Unlike screen colors, which radiate color, print colors are absorptive. That is, they absorb all colors except the color that they show.

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So if you mix more than three or more print colors the result is a darker shade. And if you mix the primary print colors cyan, magenta and yellow the result is black. 

           i.e.  CMY(100, 100, 100,) = Black

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In order to save on expensive colored inks, printers use a separate black ink instead of combining cyan, magenta and yellow whenever black alone is required e.g. printing black text.

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This is known as a CMYK color set (C = cyan, M = magenta, Y = yellow and K is used for the black component).

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White is attained simply by not printing any of the CMYK inks. This assumes that the print is on a white page or other white surface.

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