There are various color theories, but I prefer the one that goes back to Sir Isaac Newton. He was interested in the effects of white light, based his observations on the seven octaves of music. In his color circle, the seven colors he saw reflecting through white light were red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. This color theory is also based on red, yellow, and blue being primary colors. RYB colors red, yellow, and blue are those colors that cannot be made by any other color. Color are like prime numbers, but when mixed together they make lots of other colors. Newton's color spectrum is based on color scene in a rainbow, and then the light refracting from a prism or a raindrop, which is why I like this theory when explaining the basic ideas of color, because unless you have some eye disorder we can all see these colors in nature. When lined up in rainbow order, the primary colors red, yellow, and blue fall between other colors. When red and yellow are mixed together, they make orange. When yellow and blue are mixed together, they make green. When blue and red are mixed together, they make shades of indigo and violet. The acronym ROYGBIV is a good way to remember this order. But of course there are actually many more colors in the rainbow that we have names for, plus our eyes are capable of distinguishing millions of individual shades of color. Going back to Newton's color circle, it would look something like this if the entire color spectrum were added to the wheel. But this reflects how we see color in the world, and not necessarily how color is created especially in the graphic design industry. For graphic designers, the use of color and printed pieces in electronic mediums differs. Let's take a look at both of these different uses of color. In the graphic world, these two different uses are called subtractive an additive. Now, remember being able to see color has to do with light. The subtractive model or pigment theory deals with how white light is absorbed and reflected off surfaces. These surfaces include paper and how ink is printed on the paper, whereas the additive model or light theory deals with radiated and filtered light. These surfaces are electronic with the white light coming from behind such as a computer monitor, videos, and television screens. The colors in subtractive theory are called CMYK, which stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The colors in additive theory are called RGB, which stands for red, green, and blue. Let's apply this to another color wheel based of the ROYGBIV theory, as well as the subtractive and additive models. When it comes to printing with color, instead of using the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue, it was found instead that cyan, magenta, and yellow worked better in creating colors on paper, since the light is reflecting off the paper. But for color with electronic use, red, green, and blue, works better when the light comes from behind such as a screening. Now let's look at the printed colors first. The four-color process of CMYK, also known as full color, is a color reproduction system that begins with a continuous tone color image, when it is separated into four different single color images onto an individual cyan, magenta, yellow, and black plates. The result is color separation of the original image that is made up of four, one color images. One for each of the four process colors. The four color process are printed on plates and then converted into four printing plates, which are in turn mounted onto a printing press and printed using cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks. Different variations of it as you can see in this image. Each single color layer is then printed separately on the press, one on top of the other to give the impression or an illusion of a visible color spectrum. The result is a facsimile of the original image that represents the continuous tone version using various percentage of the four colors cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. This kind of printing is called offset printing, and it is done by commercial printing companies. Before the days of scanner and office or personal printers, process color separation was performed photographic using different colored filters. However, many modern desktop publishing systems and personal printers are now capable of producing color separations much like the offset printing for graphics using cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink cartridges. This capability is essential if you want to create full color documents on your computer and then print them using an offset printer. That's CMYK four-color process printing. Now let's turn to the electronic colors. Remember the RGB color model is an additive color model, in which red, green, and blue light are combined in various ways to create other colors in electronic mediums. The RGB color model is the display of colors on a television or a computer's monitor. Each pixel on the screen, which are really tiny yet get real close to see them can be represented in the computer's memory as independent values for red, green, and blue. These values are converted into intensities of light and sent to the electronic display. By using the combinations of red, green, and blue light intensities, a computer monitor can reproduce many colors through the projection of white light coming from behind. This is what makes an additive model. White light going through red, green, and blue pixels coming from behind the monitors, videos, or television screens. Values of red, green, and blue pixels are converted into intensities of light and sent to the electronic display. By using combinations of red, green, and blue light intensities, many colors can be reproduced on a computer monitor through the projection of white light. Again, this is what makes an additive model. White light going through red, green, and blue pixels coming from behind the monitors, videos, or television screens to combine together to make colors. So from RYB, red yellow blue or ROYGBIV, then to CMYK and RGB, there are many acronyms when it comes to using colors in graphic design. If those letters were not enough, the next video will cover even more colorful terms.
