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Let's talk about the additive system first. Let's get into those distinctions - but fair warning: everything you know about primary colors is about to change before your eyes. The subtractive primaries also modulate red, green and blue light, but a little less directly." The additive primaries do this very directly by controlling the amounts of red, green and blue light that we see and therefore almost directly map to the visual responses. Those are roughly sensitive to red, green and blue light. "That is to modulate the responses of the three types of cone photoreceptors in our eyes. "Both systems are accomplishing one task," says Mark Fairchild, professor and director of the Program of Color Science/Munsell Color Science Laboratory at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. This leads to two types of colour mixing, additive and subtractive." "Light enters our eyes in two ways: (1) directly from a light source and (2) reflected from an object. "We see because light enters our eyes," he says. Stephen Westland, Professor of Colour Science at the University of Leeds in England breaks things down into simple terms (before getting into the confusing complexities), in an email. These two theories are known as additive and subtractive color systems. So, what gives? The reason for the confusing contradiction is that there are two different color theories - for "material colors" like the ones used by painters and for colored light. If you're talking about physics and light, though, your primary colors are red, green and blue. In other words, if you're talking about painting, then yes: Red, yellow and blue are your primary colors.
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Here's the deal about primary colors: The players depend on the game.
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