#I cannot believe I saw a post on my dash accurately explaining additive and subtractive color

[ilovedthestars]

what IS this post talking about

The original post is accurate. The additions are not. The primary colors of pigment (yes, that includes paint) are cyan, magenta and yellow. The primary colors of light are red, green and blue.

The primary colors in one system are the secondary colors in the other system, because of how light works, which I am not going to get into here because this is a long enough post already and I’m just here to correct misinformation. “Additive and subtractive color” is the thing to look up if you would like an accurate explanation of this aspect of color theory.

You can, in fact, mix red paint. With the primary colors magenta and yellow. Yes, it feels fake, but this is the very first thing I did in a college-level color theory class. You can mix the “primary blue” from RGB with magenta and cyan, and you can mix green with cyan and yellow.

The red-yellow-blue color scheme they teach you in kindergarten is like the simplified model of the atom they teach you in middle school physics class, before re-teaching a more complex model later in school. Kindergarteners learned ROY G BIV colors so you’re not going to try to explain magenta and cyan to them and confuse them. RYB is culturally engrained, it’s close enough for most people’s purposes, but when you get to a level of education where the inaccuracy becomes relevant, you learn the more accurate model, which is CMY and RGB.