Primary and secondary colors: description, names and combinations. Color theory, basic concepts and color wheel Primary colors include

In kindergarten, you were probably taught that there are primary colors - red, yellow and blue, and all others are created from them. Bruce still remembers his first teacher, Mrs. Anderson, saying that equal amounts of red, yellow and blue make grey. Bruce tried to draw a gray cat, but it turned out to be some kind of dirty, multi-colored mess, and then he decided that it would be much better to use a simple pencil, and Mrs. Anderson was either completely colorblind or knew nothing about drawing. Now, as he traces the origins of his penchant for questioning authority, he returns again and again to that day.

Mrs. Anderson's lesson was untenable, but there was still a kernel of truth in it - the idea that all the variety of colors is achieved by a combination of three primary components. Different people work with color in different ways, but at the same time in their reasoning there is always the concept of three components that form color. An art editor, when talking about color correction, prefers to use the terms “hue,” “brightness,” and “saturation.” For someone who works on a computer, it may be more convenient to describe color in RGB values. Scientists talk about color based on theory - here is CIE Lab, and HSB, and LCH. And pre-press specialists talk about the percentage values ​​of CMYK dots.

And although the creators of Photoshop tried to take into account and satisfy the needs of all these differently-minded people (and did a good job), many users are limited to only one vision of color. This is quite natural and understandable - we all tend to adhere to the method of thinking that seems most convenient to us. However, this can make communicating with Photoshop difficult and unnecessarily complicate your work. If you understand that all methods of representing color are basically the same thing - a combination of three components, you will learn to understand the methods offered by the program for working with them and choose the most suitable option for each specific task.

“Wait a minute,” you say. “But CMYK has not three color components, but four.” Apparently, you also tend to question authorities when you notice that ends meet. Well, since we have taken on the role of authorities, we will do what authorities usually do when asked difficult questions: we will ask you to trust us. Leave your doubts for now. We promise to return to this topic later.

In this lecture we will look at the fundamental aspects of color relationships and methods of representing color in Photoshop. Sometimes we will have to resort to theory, but we strongly recommend reading everything carefully, as it will be needed later when discussing tone and color correction.

For many types of color work on the computer, the concept of primary colors is fundamental. We are talking about three colors that, in combination, form all the others. By setting different proportions of primary colors, you can form other colors, and by adjusting their ratio, you can perform color correction of images. Primary colors have two fundamental features (for now we will not take into account what colors they themselves consist of).

• They do not decompose into color components.
• Combining in different proportions, the primary ones reproduce the entire spectrum of colors.

By the way, there are also secondary colors, which are formed by a combination of two primary colors and the exclusion of the third. But they are not of particular interest to us.

Additive and subtractive colors

Before becoming fascinated by the behavior of spherical objects - apples, billiard balls and planets, Sir Isaac Newton experimented with light and prisms. He discovered that white light splits into red, green and blue components - a fairly common phenomenon that has been known for many centuries. But the discovery was that by combining red, green and blue components he was able to recreate white light. Red, green and blue colors are called additive primary colors (from the English add - add). Adding them together gives lighter colors, even white, while black means the complete absence of light (see Fig. 4.1). This is how color is formed on a TV screen and on a computer monitor.

Rice. 4.1.

But on the printed page, colors behave differently. Unlike a TV screen, the page does not emit light, but reflects it. When reproducing color images on print, we are primarily dealing not with light, but with pigments (paints, toner, wax), which absorb some colors and reflect others.

The primary colors of pigments are cyan, yellow and purple. They are called subtractive primary colors (from the English subtract - subtract). When paint is applied to white paper, light is absorbed (subtracted) and the reflected color becomes darker. (Perhaps it will be clearer this way: to obtain white, additive colors need to be added to each other, and subtractive colors need to be subtracted). Cyan pigments completely absorb red light, magenta absorbs green, and yellow absorbs blue. When cyan, magenta and yellow of maximum intensity are added together, black is theoretically formed (see Fig. 4.1).

Speaking of primary colors, Mrs. Anderson was absolutely right, but she named the wrong colors. By coloring a drawing with red, yellow and blue pencils, you will not be able to get a gray color, no matter how hard you try.

Imperfect world

A little while ago we asked you to trust us about CMYK, and we just told you that the combination of cyan, magenta and yellow theoretically produces black. In reality, however, it turns out brown. Why? As our friend and colleague Bob Shaffle says, “God made RGB, but man made CMYK.” And we will add: “Who do you trust more?”

Imperfection of transformation. If we only dealt with CMYK, everything would be much simpler. But a significant portion of the problems are due to the fact that scanners see color in RGB, and to reproduce it in print we have to convert RGB values ​​to CMYK. However, the conversion path is not at all smooth (see the section "How color parameters interact"

Warm colors - These are the colors located on the chromatic circle, starting with yellow and ending with red-violet. However, given the phenomenon of one color influencing another, for example, red-violet may appear warmer if it is placed next to a cool green color, and cooler if placed next to a warm color, such as orange.

Cool colors - These colors range from blue-violet to yellow-green. However, yellow-green can appear cooler next to red and warmer next to blue.

Light or pale colors - These are colors containing varying amounts of white.

Dark colors - These are colors that contain black or complementary colors.

Bright or saturated colors - These are colors that, in principle, do not contain white, gray, black, or additional colors. But this concept is relative, since, for example, the bright colors of the blue range do not end with pure blue; saturated colors also include blues containing white or black. In contrast, orange containing black is considered a dull color because it turns brownish.

Dull colors - These are colors that contain some amount of gray or complementary colors.

Concepts of primary, secondary and tertiary colors

Primary colors(Figure 1) the primary natural colors of light and the primary colors of pigments (used in painting and printing) are separated. These are colors that are not created by mixing. If you mix the primary red, blue and green rays, you get white light. If you mix the primary colors of magenta, cyan and yellow - the colors of the pigments - you get black.

Figure 1 - Natural colors

(Figure 2) are obtained by mixing two primary colors. Secondary colors of light include: magenta, yellow and cyan (greenish blue). The secondary colors of the pigments are red, green and purple.

Figure 2 - Secondary colors

Tertiary colors: are formed by mixing primary and secondary colors. These include orange, crimson, light green, bright blue, emerald green, dark purple.

Additional colors (Figure 3): located on opposite sides of the chromatic circle. So, for example, for red, green is complementary (obtained by mixing two primary colors - yellow and cyan (greenish blue). And for blue, orange is complementary (obtained by mixing yellow and magenta).

Figure 3 - Munsell chromatic circle

The Munsell system describes color based on three indicators: hue, lightness and saturation (Figure 4).

Key - this is, for example, yellow or blue.

Lightness shows at what grayscale level (vertical axis) the color is located.

Saturation: shows at what distance from the vertical axis in the horizontal plane the tone is located.

Thus, in the Munsell system, colors are arranged in three dimensions and have the appearance of a tree. The barrel (vertical axis) represents a scale with gradations of gray (from black at the bottom to white at the top). The tones are located on a chromatic circle, which is, as it were, “implanted” on a vertical axis. The horizontal axes show the saturation of tones.

Figure 4 - Munsell system

The definition of primary colors depends on how we intend to reproduce the color. The colors visible when sunlight is split by a prism are sometimes called spectral colors. These are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

b

V

Figure 1.9 - Three types of flowers:

A- primary colors; b– secondary colors; V– tertiary colors

The color wheel is obtained by combining the main - primary, additional - secondary and tertiary colors. The primary colors are red, yellow and blue. To make secondary colors, we mix one color with another. Yellow and red give us orange, red and blue give us magenta, and blue and yellow give us green. What are tertiary colors? Simply take the primary color and add the adjacent secondary color to it. This means that there are six tertiary colors (two colors from each primary color). (Figure 1.9)

When two or more colors go “together,” they are called complementary or complementary colors. To put it more precisely, if two colors, when mixed together, produce a neutral gray (paint/pigment) or white (light) color, they are called complementary colors.

1.7 Name of colors and pigments

Color names are classified into three types: actual color terms; names of the coloring pigment transferred to the color; adjectives from common nouns of objects with an attractive, memorable coloring.

The actual color terms - blue, green, yellow - have no other meanings in modern language. The pigment names - carmine, ocher, rhodamine - are highly specialized and are used only in professions that deal with paints. Names based on the color of objects - lilac, lemon, crimson - are characteristic of colloquial speech, literature, and art history. They are very figurative, since the color indicated in them is stored in our memory and can be imagined, but such designations do not have the accuracy necessary in a scientific definition, and are not used in science.

Any “physical” color name can be expanded into a large range of shades or varieties. How many colors can you see? The human eye can distinguish about 200 color tones. In this variety, 8 main groups of colors can be distinguished: purple, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

Purple colors differ from red colors in that they contain a violet or blue tint that reds do not have. The whole group is called by the name of the paint, which in antiquity was made from a sea snail. All the colors in the purple group are very interesting. Ruby is a noble darkish red color with blue tints. Rhodamine is close to ruby, but has a more noticeable purple tint. Fuchsin - comes from the name of the plant, has a very bright light red color with some inner blue.

Figure 1.10 - Chromatic colors

Figure 1.11 - Purple colors

The red group covers all reds and goes by different names: crimson, crimson, crimson, scarlet, coral, pink, terracotta, etc.

The orange, yellow and green groups have many derived shades, designated by pigment (lead yellow, zinc yellow, chromium oxide), by natural color (orange, lemon, grass green), or without special names.

In the blue group, cyan blue or turquoise should be noted. In the violet group, lilac (light purple) stands out.

Most color terms used in practice come from comparison with any objects, phenomena, works of nature or art. When studying color associations, one should take just such a differentiated view of color. It turns out that the perception of color is much more stable and definite than is commonly believed. The strongest emotions are caused by the colors of the human body and its secretions (although this is not always realized). So, no one remains indifferent to pink - they either love it or hate it. The subtlest shades of pink can evoke a variety of emotions in us. Red and other colors inherent in humans have the same strong and definite effect.

Astronomer, writer, chemist, physicist, philosopher - Isaac Newton. And he once conducted an experiment with a prism through which ordinary sunlight passed. Imagine the natural scientist’s surprise when he saw white light - a real rainbow. And then, in the course of further experiments, other scientists realized that in fact there are only three primary colors.

Every hunter wants to know...

Everyone is Red

Hunter - Orange

Wishes - Yellow

Know – Green

Where - Blue

Sitting - Blue

Pheasant – Purple

This well-known mnemonic encrypts all the primary colors of the spectrum. Observant people have already noticed that there is no black and white here. But such states are usually not considered in the spectrum, and therefore they are not included in the proverb.

However, from all this diversity, scientists have identified only three primary colors - blue, red and yellow. And all other colors, tones, halftones and shades are obtained from mixing these three colors. As this is well known, for example, to artists who are familiar with the palette and master the art of achieving the desired shade on the canvas.

Man and colors

The human eye is able to perceive colors because the retina has three types of special cones that work independently. They contain different pigments that respond to certain colors, red, green and so on.

In fact, each cone reacts to all light waves (except ultraviolet and infrared), but “its own color” is felt better by the pigment. Then the received signals are transmitted to the brain and it then analyzes the information received and gives us an understanding of this or that shade.

Interestingly, primary colors cannot be called a property of the color itself; rather, they are determined by the ability of the human eye to distinguish them. In addition, this is influenced by various technical systems that reproduce color.

From the point of view of psychophysiology, scientists believe that there are actually four “pure” colors - red, green, yellow and blue. Among them, yellow and blue form one axis in color contrast, and red and green form another. However, there are people who cannot distinguish between primary colors or any individual shades. They are called colorblind. Contrary to popular belief, they do not see the world as a black and white photograph, but simply cannot perceive specific colors well.

We all know from school articles the technique of memorizing the colors of the rainbow. Something like a nursery rhyme sits deep in our memory: “ TO every O hunter and wants h nah, G de With goes f adhan." The first letter of each word means a color, and the order of the words is the sequence of these colors in the rainbow: To red, O range, and yellow, h green, G blue, With blue, f purple
Rainbows occur because sunlight is refracted and reflected by water droplets floating in the atmosphere. These droplets deflect and reflect light of different colors (wavelengths) differently: red less, violet more. As a result, white sunlight is decomposed into a spectrum, the colors of which smoothly transition into each other through many intermediate shades. Rainbows are the clearest example of what visible white light is made of.

However, from the point of view of the physics of light, no colors exist in nature, but there are certain wavelengths that an object reflects. This combination (superposition) of reflected waves hits the retina of the human eye and is perceived by it as the color of an object. For example, the green color of a birch leaf means that its surface absorbs all wavelengths of the solar spectrum, except for the wavelength of the green part of the spectrum and the wavelengths of those colors that determine its shade. Or the brown color of a school board, our eye perceives as reflected wavelengths of blue, red and yellow wavelength ranges of varying intensities.

White, which is a mixture of all the colors of sunlight, means that the surface of an object reflects almost all wavelengths, while black reflects almost nothing. Therefore, we cannot talk about “pure” white or “pure” black colors, since complete absorption of radiation or its complete reflection in nature is practically impossible.

But artists cannot paint with wavelengths. They use real paints, and even a fairly limited set (they won’t carry more than 10,000 tones and shades with them on an easel). Just like in a printing house, an endless amount of paints cannot be stored. The science of color mixing is one of the fundamental ones for those who work with images, including airbrushing. A huge number of tables and guides have been compiled for obtaining the desired colors and their shades. For example, these*:

or

The human eye is the most versatile “device” for mixing. Studies have shown that it is most sensitive to only three primary colors: blue, red-orange and green. Information received from excited cells of the eye is transmitted along nerve pathways to the cerebral cortex, where complex processing and correction of the received data occurs. As a result, a person perceives what he sees as a single color picture. It has been established that the eye perceives a huge number of intermediate shades of color and colors obtained from mixing light of different wavelengths. In total there are up to 15,000 color tones and shades.
If the retina loses the ability to distinguish any color, then the person also loses it. For example, there are people who are unable to distinguish green from red.

Based on this feature of human color perception, the RGB color model was created ( Red red, Green green, Blue blue) for printing full-color images, including photographs.

The color gray and its shades stand a little apart here. Gray color is obtained by combining three primary colors - red, green and blue - in equal concentrations. Depending on the brightness of these colors, the shade of gray varies from black (0% brightness) to white (100% brightness).

Thus, all colors found in nature can be created by mixing the three primary colors and changing their intensity.

*Tables are taken from the public domain on the Internet.