Color Concepts 101 (2001) [pdf]
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Color Concepts 101 (2001) [pdf]
1–10 of 13 posts
Re: Color Concepts 101 (2001) [pdf]
#2> In theory, the combination of CMY at 100% (100,100,100) creates black, In practice it creates a muddy brown due to limitations of toner (and ink) secondaries.
Does anyone know why this is?
> "K" is used for black to avoid confusion with Blue and because the black component is the "Key" for a set of color separations
I always assumed it was just because "K" is the last letter in "black" — apparently not!
Re: Color Concepts 101 (2001) [pdf]
#3> In theory, the combination of CMY at 100% (100,100,100) creates black, In practice it creates a muddy brown due to limitations of toner (and ink) secondaries. Does anyone know why this is? > "K" is used for black to avoid confusion with Blue and because the black component is the "Key" for a set of color separations I always assumed it was just because "K" is the last letter in "black" — apparently not!
> In theory, the combination of CMY at 100% (100,100,100) creates black, In practice it creates a muddy brown due to limitations of toner (and ink) secondaries.
i believe this may be because the combined absorption spectrum of a "full C M Y dot" still has gaps that a "full K" toner is engineered to cover?
Re: Color Concepts 101 (2001) [pdf]
#4> In theory, the combination of CMY at 100% (100,100,100) creates black, In practice it creates a muddy brown due to limitations of toner (and ink) secondaries. Does anyone know why this is? > "K" is used for black to avoid confusion with Blue and because the black component is the "Key" for a set of color separations I always assumed it was just because "K" is the last letter in "black" — apparently not!
> In theory, the combination of CMY at 100% (100,100,100) creates black, In practice it creates a muddy brown due to limitations of toner (and ink) secondaries. i believe this may be because the combined absorption spectrum of a "full C M Y dot" still has gaps that a "full K" toner is engineered to cover?
[deleted]
Re: Color Concepts 101 (2001) [pdf]
#5> In theory, the combination of CMY at 100% (100,100,100) creates black, In practice it creates a muddy brown due to limitations of toner (and ink) secondaries. Does anyone know why this is? > "K" is used for black to avoid confusion with Blue and because the black component is the "Key" for a set of color separations I always assumed it was just because "K" is the last letter in "black" — apparently not!
> In theory, the combination of CMY at 100% (100,100,100) creates black, In practice it creates a muddy brown due to limitations of toner (and ink) secondaries. i believe this may be because the combined absorption spectrum of a "full C M Y dot" still has gaps that a "full K" toner is engineered to cover?
This is a good answer: one of the hardest things to explain about color is there's nothing "blessed" about RGB or CMYK. So it's not so much "why don't they combine to do X?" as "how could they combine to do X?", especially at the extremes of color, i.e. white/black
You can pick any N pigments and they won't be able to produce a full range of colors when combined, and it's always an issue in every domain. Colors physically don't cancel out colorfulness (i.e. not-grayscale-ness), so mix cyan, magenta, yellow, whatever, you end up with a very dark color with some color to it, which is brown.
Re: Color Concepts 101 (2001) [pdf]
#6> In theory, the combination of CMY at 100% (100,100,100) creates black, In practice it creates a muddy brown due to limitations of toner (and ink) secondaries. Does anyone know why this is? > "K" is used for black to avoid confusion with Blue and because the black component is the "Key" for a set of color separations I always assumed it was just because "K" is the last letter in "black" — apparently not!
>Does anyone know why this is?
Because the subtractive primaries (CMY) in reality are imperfect, they cannot absorb 100% of the light that is shone upon them. This is also hampered by whatever substrate the inks are being applied to. (Tangentially this is why there is so much fuss over Vantablack.)
>I always assumed it was just because "K" is the last letter in "black" — apparently not!
Worth noting: the term "Key" goes beyond the colour black. It's referring to the keying colour, in some scenarios this would be the darkest of whichever colours are used in printing.
Depending on the printer you're using, the K in CMYK may also not be a typical black like what you would find in a black+white office printer, but rather something that you might consider a very dark grey. Subtractive colour reproduction is a bit of a rabbit hole, you can find printers that will include a variety of colours beyond CMYK in order to help fill out gaps in the CMYK gamut. Epson have a few printers like this, some which take inks in violet, green, orange, various shades of grey, lighter versions of cyan and magenta, florescent inks etc.
Re: Color Concepts 101 (2001) [pdf]
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In theory, the combination of CMY at 100% (100,100,100) creates black, In practice it creates a muddy brown due to limitations of toner (and ink) secondaries. i believe this may be because the combined absorption spectrum of a "full C M Y dot" still has gaps that a "full K" toner is engineered to cover?
This is a good answer: one of the hardest things to explain about color is there's nothing "blessed" about RGB or CMYK. So it's not so much "why don't they combine to do X?" as "how could they combine to do X?", especially at the extremes of color, i.e. white/black You can pick any N pigments and they won't be able to produce a full range of colors when combined, and it's always an issue in every domain. Colors physi…
There is something blessed about red, green, and blue: they're close to an orthogonal basis for the L, M, and S receptors in our eyes. However, there's nothing particularly special about any particular set of R, G, and B primaries. In fact, there is no set of three primaries that are both physically realizable and completely cover the set of colors we can see. This is why different color spaces exist: for photos archiving and graphical work by professionals who understand color gamut limitations, ProPhoto gives you the ability to represent nearly any color you can perceive at the cost of being able to represent many colors that cannot exist. sRGB has primaries that are easy to make out of phosphor, so it was a good baseline that every monitor manufacturer could hit without needing fancy color correction hardware, but has a small gamut. Adobe RGB is designed to cover the CMYK gamut better than sRGB. And so on, and so on.
In particular, this is why you can't get HDR by just turning up the brightness: the primaries are different. The bright red isnt just brighter, it's "redder than red", and the same for the other primaries. Imagine an HSV color picker, but you can turn S up to 200%
Which, I suppose, is basically what you said, but I've spent the last couple days diving far further into color science than my little battery monitor really needs, so the details were on my mind.
Re: Color Concepts 101 (2001) [pdf]
#8> In theory, the combination of CMY at 100% (100,100,100) creates black, In practice it creates a muddy brown due to limitations of toner (and ink) secondaries. Does anyone know why this is? > "K" is used for black to avoid confusion with Blue and because the black component is the "Key" for a set of color separations I always assumed it was just because "K" is the last letter in "black" — apparently not!
With colored pigments (even ideal ones) white light would still need to bounce between all 3 to be absorbed. Some is going to bounce off 2 or 3 and come out colored.
Re: Color Concepts 101 (2001) [pdf]
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good answer: one of the hardest things to explain about color is there's nothing "blessed" about RGB or CMYK. So it's not so much "why don't they combine to do X?" as "how could they combine to do X?", especially at the extremes of color, i.e. white/black You can pick any N pigments and they won't be able to produce a full range of colors when combined, and it's always an issue in every domain. Colors physi…
There is something blessed about red, green, and blue: they're close to an orthogonal basis for the L, M, and S receptors in our eyes. However, there's nothing particularly special about any particular set of R, G, and B primaries. In fact, there is no set of three primaries that are both physically realizable and completely cover the set of colors we can see. This is why different color spaces exist: for photos arch…
> The bright red isn't just brighter, it's "redder than red"
You probably already know this, but there is such a thing as "the reddest red." A single wavelength of light is fully chromatic. As you mention, most color spaces use a "less red red," because it's easier to produce.
Some color spaces do use impossible primaries in order to capture more area but, as the name suggests, they are unphysical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProPhoto_RGB_color_space
Supersaturated colors do somewhat exist, but these rely on human visual oddities.
Re: Color Concepts 101 (2001) [pdf]
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good answer: one of the hardest things to explain about color is there's nothing "blessed" about RGB or CMYK. So it's not so much "why don't they combine to do X?" as "how could they combine to do X?", especially at the extremes of color, i.e. white/black You can pick any N pigments and they won't be able to produce a full range of colors when combined, and it's always an issue in every domain. Colors physi…
There is something blessed about red, green, and blue: they're close to an orthogonal basis for the L, M, and S receptors in our eyes. However, there's nothing particularly special about any particular set of R, G, and B primaries. In fact, there is no set of three primaries that are both physically realizable and completely cover the set of colors we can see. This is why different color spaces exist: for photos arch…
You put a real smile on my face, I had to get way into color science out of nowhere a few years back, I wanted to take the design system from like 12 sets of hard coded colors to infinity. Ended up building a color space, etc to make it work and design-able. Launched at Google as Material You. But HN always impresses, I lived and breathed it for about 2 years and you got to expert level in like 48 hours,