Incredible BAT Machine
Tech Support
173 W. Frederick Street, Millersville PA 17551-1911 - voice: 717-872-2183 - FAX: 717-872-4583
Email: techsupport@colorbat.com Web Site: www.colorbat.com
Understanding Color
In order to be able to work in PhotoShop and
perform various types of color correction activities,
you need to have a basic understanding of
photographic color concepts.
There are six photographic colors:
RED
GREEN
BLUE
and
CYAN
MAGENTA
YELLOW
All color manipulation is performed using
combinations of these six, basic, colors.
The first three, red, green, and blue, are called the
Primary Colors or are sometimes referred to as the
“additive” colors.
The second three, cyan, magenta and yellow, are
called the Secondary Colors or are sometimes
referred to as the “subtractive” colors.
RED and CYAN have a teeter-totter relationship.
What ever you do to increase the amount of one, will
automatically decrease the amount of the other and
by an equal amount.
GREEN and MAGENTA have a teeter-totter
relationship. What ever you do to increase the
amount of one, will automatically decrease the
amount of the other and by an equal amount.
BLUE and YELLOW have a teeter-totter
relationship. What ever you do to increase the
amount of one, will automatically decrease the
amount of the other and by an equal amount.
Page 1, Data Sheet 4010, rev: Saturday, March 17, 2001
Data Sheet 4010
If you mix equal amounts of YELLOW and
MAGENTA, you get RED
If you mix equal amounts of CYAN and YELLOW,
you get GREEN
If you mix equal amounts of CYAN and
MAGENTA, you get BLUE
When an ink jet printer prints a picture, it uses CMY
(CYAN, MAGENTA, YELLOW) ink to produce
all the colors of the rainbow. By laying down
TRANSPARENT drops of CMY ink on top of each
other the inks combine to form all the colors
according to the “rules” noted above.
This works well as long as the inks are
TRANSPARENT. But, in recent times, in an effort
to make inks more stable and resistant to fading,
manufacturers have started offering so-called
“archival” inks which contain blends of dyes
(transparent) and pigments (opaque).
When you lay down a drop of opaque material on
top of a color, the color underneath cannot show
through, thus you do not get the expected color that
combining the two should produce. This results in
colors that are not as pretty and vivid as they would
otherwise be. This is referred to as a reduced “color
gamut”.
All archival inks (that use pigments) suffer from the
problem of reduced color gamut.
On the next page is a photographic color wheel that
can help you to learn and understand the
relationships between the six photographic colors.
# # #
Page 2, Data Sheet 4010, rev: Saturday, March 17, 2001