Design Nomenclature / Color
Subtractive color
Also called subtractive mixing, pigment mixing
- Color
- Physical Model Making
- 2D & 3D
This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.
Mixing by removing wavelengths from a light source: each colorant absorbs part of the spectrum, so every addition darkens. Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the ideal primaries — each subtracts exactly one additive primary — and the red-yellow-blue set taught in schools is a historical approximation that demonstrably mixes worse.
In practice
Real inks miss their ideal absorptions, which is why CMY alone gives a muddy brown instead of black and a fourth ink has to be added.
Not to be confused with
- Additive colorMixing by summing emitted light: red, green, and blue primaries combine toward white, and every addition raises luminance. Screens, stage lighting, and projection work this way. The primaries were chosen to address the eye's three cone types — there is nothing special about those wavelengths in the physics.
- Partitive mixingMixing that happens in the eye rather than in the medium: marks too small to resolve individually average into one percept, weighted by the area each occupies. Neither additive nor subtractive — no light is summed and no colorant is combined. Halftone, pointillism, weaving, and every RGB subpixel depend on it.