Talk:Primary color

Color matching in figures
The cover image from King's book is nice. Like a lot of color plates, I am not so sure about the actual hues in the book. The cover red, yellow and blue look different than the scan. The archive scan doesn't look like cyan, magenta, yellow. Maneesh (talk) 17:20, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * This is as complicated & philosophical as the topic  :-).  The paper is not white in the archive image.  So is it a faithful vs. darkened reproduction of an aged book? And is an aged book more faithful than making it look like it did when it was printed?   :-) North8000 (talk) 17:36, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * My thought is that any renaming of hues over what is in the text is speculative. You would need a reliable source that compared hues in a credible/critical way to rename them in the caption. Maneesh (talk) 17:50, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I think an image from the archive scan would make more sense to use here. These seem to be different editions or something (the archive copy's cover doesn't have the funny looking offset in the title lettering either). It's quite confusing to see text describe a color as red when the color looks like a magenta (while not the case on the cover). Maneesh (talk) 02:52, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I think my scan is more accurate than the one on archive. I have the original, and it's definitely very close to what you'd call CMY, or printers' process colors.  Maneesh, I can loan you my copy if you'd like, since we're local to each other. The cover is indeed a bit weird; I don't know if it's printed on the colored background, or the background color is also printed.  It looks like the paper is brown (since it's also brown on the back), and the inks are thick enough to mostly cover that. That brown is rendered too reddish in my scan, but the "red" and "blue" really do look pretty close to "magenta" and "cyan" (the plates, more so than the cover); not that we have to say that in the caption, just my impression.  I suppose it's also possible that the 1923 and 1925 versions are different; different publisher, and distinctly different cover colorations. Dicklyon (talk) 04:43, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the kind offer but I trust you are seeing the colors correctly. I would still say it makes sense to use the archive scan since it doesn't show such an obvious visual conflict (on such core idea in this article), but as I said in the other thread, I won't do any serious editing here for awhile. I'll let other editors make their suggestions. Maneesh (talk) 06:59, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no opinion. Since the use here is the the concept presented by the book author, possibly whatever reproduction is the closest to what the author of the book intended would be best. North8000 (talk) 11:34, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The trouble with the archive scans, including from Google Books, is that they typically don't have a realistic gamma, which makes the colors dark and over-saturated. In terms of "what the author intended", it seems clear to me that he intended to use primaries that have a decent gamut, which means his blue is more like printer's "process blue" or "cyan blue" as it has been called, and his red similarly what printers call "process red", which is closer to magenta. The names and the colors don't quite line up the way we use them in modern color science, but they are what they are. Dicklyon (talk) 19:11, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I found an old book that talks about "process blue" and variants. I've clipped a bit of a color image from p.295 showing one case of their process red and blue, and adjust the curve by dragging the "center" thingie in Photoshop Levels command to 2, to approximately correct for the fact that the Google Book Search puts linear intensity data, instead of gamma compressed, into the page images.  This lightens the colors and shifts them toward cyan and magenta.  Try it. Dicklyon (talk) 22:50, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Any of these inferences may be true, but I think it is much easier to explain by crappy color proofing. It's easy to believe this was a 'sell me' color book and no one was paying particular attention at press time. The book itself covers "red" and "magenta" pigments inside, I don't think the visual association with those pigments was different in 192X as compared to now. The claims on page 8 about mixing all colors aren't even interpretable or easily reconciled with the cover or color plate: "With the following colors at hand all known colors may be obtained. Lemon yellow, which is of greenish hue; yellow of orange hue; red with orange hue; red which has a bluish cast. Blue with a reddish tone, also blue with a leaning to- ward green. A liberal supply of white and some black which does not contain blue.". A fun artifact from the times, I presume not cited by anyone and I don't think it the claims about color should be taken too seriously. Maneesh (talk) 23:28, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * It seems sensible to me that they mention the use of 6 pigments (2 each of RYB, leaning different directions) to get "all known colors". It's a pretty large gamut at least.  Not sure what your point is about "crappy color proofing".  In my experience, printers are pretty careful about getting things right.  The color of the archive scans can't be trusted though.  Dicklyon (talk) 03:30, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I never suggested that using 6 pigments is unreasonable to make a painting or that the gamut wouldn't be sufficiently for some purposes requiring diverse gamuts. The source is not coherent, red, yellow and blue (not white and black) are suggested to mix *all known colors* on the cover with the three circles, they are the primary colors on the color plate (does that mean they mix all known colors? who knows?). Then there are eight colors specified in the prose to mix "all known colors". The colors you can't mix with those colors are exactly the chromatic red, yellow, and blue single pigments. Then again, it's basically impossible to evaluate the claims because the specifications are imprecise (what is "blue with a reddish tone?"...alizarin? manganese violet?). Is this the "RYB system"? How can "yellow of greenish hue" and "blue with a leaning toward green" be a part of the "RYB system". Not the least bit suspicious about his prescription given the book isn't much more than a list of pigments? Just old silly color think meant to sell silly color books. Munsell was obviously familiar with this type of thing before this book was published. Color proofing mistakes aren't that common but this wouldn't surprise me at all (the offset on the cover title is certainly suspicious). We can speculate on what underlying differences that you see in your copy and the edition from a different year on archive but they aren't obvious and they don't appear to be consistent even within the edition (cover vs. color plate vs. prose). If your copy was printed in 1920 something, I'd bet very strongly that there must some shifts in color over the course of a century. Best to avoid such incoherent sources. Maneesh (talk) 05:18, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * And I never suggested that the source is particularly "coherent" in the sense that you mean. But it is a representation of some of the thinking in traditional color theory, and some of the practice for getting a decent gamut size.  I get that you think traditional color theory is "just old silly color think"; that's one POV on the relation between traditional color theory and modern color science.  But traditional color theory is still going strong 100 years later, because there's another POV about how useful the RYB circle arrangement is to artists and designers.  Still unsure what you think is relevant about color differences in different editions and scans of this book though. Dicklyon (talk) 17:06, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * If a source doesn't make coherent claims and not notable what sense is there in putting in this article? Itten doesn't make much sense, but he is notable. It's not clear what the color plate in the book is saying, you've added "To achieve a larger gamut of colors via mixing, the red and blue pigments used in illustrative materials such as the Color Mixing Guide in the image are often closer to peacock blue (a blue-green or cyan) and carmine (color) (or crimson or magenta), respectively." How do you know what inks were used in that book? Are those the inks we are seeing in the color plate? Have they decayed over about a century? The color plate says red, yellow, and blue...that magenta circle sure doesn't look red to me and the book knows the difference between magenta and red pigments since it lists them separately. Unnecessary confusion. Your sectioning has also put the broad general claims about primary colors in pigments that span a thousand years *under* "Traditional red, yellow, and blue primary colors" which is used to describe 18th century ideas; this is isn't sensible. Maneesh (talk) 17:51, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Notability is not a concept that's applicable to sources. As for coherent claims, it seems coherent enough to me; just not from the POV of modern color science; but that's not where it's coming from.  As for the colors of the inks, I listed several sources from back around them that discuss the colors of the process-red and process-blue inks typically used, and this book seems to fit that. Dicklyon (talk) 01:48, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Indeed, notability isn't the correct complaint, WP:UBO is. Not coherent to me because it makes a variety of claims that aren't consistent with eachother, the most clear one in the prose is precisely *not* "RYB", so it doesn't make sense to describe that in a section which you have titled "Traditional red, yellow, and blue primary colors". You do not know the identity of the inks without some sort of chemical analysis. Perhaps it was some sort of custom run, a number of inks were available at the time. The claim in the article that suggests the colors of the inks used is pure and unnecessary speculation. Maneesh (talk) 17:45, 24 June 2021 (UTC)



I got hold of the 1923 edition and scanned them together. The coverstock is a very different color, so let's ignore that. And they have different publishers, in different states. So the fact that there's a little bit of color variation makes sense. Still, both use a "process red" not far from magenta, and a "process blue" not far from cyan. For what that's worth. Dicklyon (talk) 04:31, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what ink or inks the color plates use. I don't know how you could claim to know either without a mass spec and some other tools. The text says "red" and apparently the color plates are more purple and the cover doesn't match with those claims. The color plate makes claims about mixing a single chart with a small number of colors. The actual content of the book says something completely different with respect to mixing all known colors - the part that is actually relevant to this article. None of this is coherent, none of this is used by others it should not be used here. Maneesh (talk) 21:37, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe if you two experts could state exactly what the content question/debate is, this 1/2 dummy (me) could chime in on it. :-) Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:10, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what the question is, or why Maneesh thinks I'm making claims about what inks were used when I say something about what color they are. He previously seemed to be saying that my observations on the 1925 edition were due to sloppy printing, and that the 1923 edition colors were probably closer to the modern interpretation of red and blue.  This scans suggests to me that that's not the case.  I'll loan him the books if he wants to use his own eyes, or his own colorimeter, or his own mass spectrometer, to find a way to say something other than what a lot of sources say about process red and process blue printing inks. Dicklyon (talk) 05:21, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The claim in the article is "To achieve a larger gamut of colors via mixing, the red and blue pigments used in illustrative materials such as the Color Mixing Guide in the image are often closer to peacock blue (a blue-green or cyan) and carmine (color) (or crimson or magenta), respectively."....so the inks used to print the image on the page from "Color Mixing" were closer to peacock blue, carmine...whether you are describing the appearance of the primary inks or their chemical composition, how do you know the composition of the ink that you see? You can't unless someone tells you directly or you do a detailed chemical analysis. The appearance of a layer ink to your eye doesn't tell you what inks were mixed to make that layer, in general, there are many ways of making a given color of ink on a page from different primary inks. Furthermore, how does one know that this was "often" the case since in the same source we see what common sense would tell us about the practice in that era, that "many variations are encountered...practice of artists in changing the various colors makes standardization of process colors impossible". The inclusion of this book is even more confusing since it says that the primary colors are red, yellow and blue but the red definitely has some blue in it, which is different from what the cover clearly suggests...which is different than what the prose says (which uses white and black and colors that are exactly not red, yellow and blue). What is this source doing here and why is there so many unnecessary, and unsupported inferences?Maneesh (talk) 05:32, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Maneesh, on your "what is this source doing here" question, whether it's from a "be a useful article" standpoint, or a wiki guidelines, IMO there is a low bar for inclusion of a source. The wiki source standards are essentially sourcing and sourcing requirements for  inclusion of material.  Now with that sidebar aside, I think that most of your comments are basically saying that there is material in there that doesn't seem to have a basis.  Which means that it also doesn't meet the higher bar of being sourced.     If so there are many things that you could do. You could just try boldly editing it to remove whatever you think is wrong.  You could just put  tags on the items that you are concerned about. Or you could propose specific changes/deletions here in talk.  Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:11, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * No that isn't what I am saying. I am well aware that it makes sense to include some incoherent sources that say nothing more "RYB are the primary colors", you can see I've added a number of those sources myself to show how the claim is common. It's the additional, reachy unsupported inferences that are being made about how the color plates in "Color Mixing" that are the problem in this specific instance. There needs to be a consensus that the claim around "To achieve a larger gamut of colors via mixing, the red and blue pigments used in illustrative materials such as the Color Mixing Guide..." can't be true since no one here knows what pigments were used to make the color plates in that source. Maneesh (talk) 17:19, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * And that it doesn't make sense to show the pages of a source that says red yellow and blue are the primary colors when the image seems to be showing magenta/purple. That is very very confusing to readers, you don't need to show a picture from a source that isn't making sense about such a basic claim. Maneesh (talk) 17:22, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The statement is about the pigment colors, not the pigment chemistry. I cited various sources about process red and process blue colors in support of the observation.  I use this source because it has the best illustration I could find of how the process colors mix on paper.  It makes a bridge between the paint mixing that it talks about and the color printing arts in which the RYB conceptual model had to actually work for mixing a wide gamut of colors, which evolved eventually to the CMYK model.  Dicklyon (talk) 17:46, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * You don't know the appearance or the chemical identity of inks that was used to print that color plate. You don't know if those colors are single ink or a mix, what they look like or what they are. You just see a layer of color, that's all, that doesn't tell you what it is made of. We know that there were a variety of inks in use at the time, and there is no obvious way to find out what they were here without something like mass spectrometry; I doubt anyone would take up that study in this case.  Plain and simple. Maneesh (talk) 22:24, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, we agree that I don't know the chemical identity of the inks used. Dicklyon (talk) 23:57, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't know how much more obvious I can make your speculation, what I said "You don't know the appearance or the chemical identity of inks that was used to print that color plate.", you reply with "we agree that I don't know the chemical identity of the inks used". You can only see appearance of their subtractive mixture. Maneesh (talk) 00:34, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Here's what the text currently says: Printers traditionally used inks of such colors, known as "process blue" and "process red", before modern color science and the printing industry converged on the process colors (and names) cyan and magenta (this is not to say that RYB is the same as CMY, or that it is exactly subtractive, but that there is a range of ways to conceptualize traditional RYB as a subtractive system in the framework of modern color science).
 * To achieve a larger gamut of colors via mixing, the red and blue pigments used in illustrative materials such as the Color Mixing Guide in the image are often closer to peacock blue (a blue-green or cyan) and carmine (color) (or crimson or magenta), respectively.

Please let us know what part of this you find unsupported or whatever. Maybe I should have said "carmine lake" and "crimson lake", like the sources, instead of "carmine" and "crimson"? Is that a difference? Dicklyon (talk) 00:03, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I see, carmine lake and crimson lake in the sources are names for the pigment carmine, while I'm talking about the color of the ink being somewhere between red and magnenta, like the color of those pigments. Not a big jump, and pretty consistent with what the sources are saying. Where it says "process red may be considered carmine lake", I think it's using the pigment name to convey a pretty accurate description of the color, not saying that's the actual pigment used usually for process red. Dicklyon (talk) 00:21, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
 * For emphasis again: "You don't know the appearance or the chemical identity of inks that was used to print that color plate." You can only see appearance of their subtractive mixture. Maneesh (talk) 00:34, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that maybe the red and yellow and blue circles were not printed with the red and yellow and blue process inks, but with mixtures? I suppose that's possible.  Seems unlikely though.  Dicklyon (talk) 03:27, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Your eyes do not have magic powers. You cannot tell by looking at spot of color on a page what inks were used to make that color. Maneesh (talk) 04:20, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
 * But maybe my eyes have a sufficiently advanced technology that you can't distinguish from magic? Anyway, if your speculation is right, then the printing inks would have a wider gamut than the mixtures of the shown red, yellow, and blue, right?  Is that your point?  What of it?  Dicklyon (talk) 04:55, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
 * And by mixing do you mean printing by halftoning? Or do you mean they mixed their process inks from other inks?  I should be able to look and see if there's any halftoning; I didn't see any, but I'll check in a few days when I get back home from my Independence Day holiday weekend. Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I've made my point clear to the point of pain at this point. You are speculating on the identity of inks that no reliable source tells you about (not even the text that the diagram is from which is little more than a list of colorants that includes such inks) or ever will. I'm not the one who is speculating here, it is you who are making claims about the appearance and/or identities of the inks used to print a colored page. The speculation should be removed from the article, the diagram should also be removed as it only serves to only confuse since the text says red but the hue shown is purple/magenta. I am also not interested in your WP:OR on what process was used to print that page. Maneesh (talk) 05:07, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
 * No, I have no interest in the identities of the inks; just their colors. I don't think I'm speculating when I say that books about color were printed with 3-color and 4-color printing processes, as described in the sources I cited. Dicklyon (talk) 05:23, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
 * You are absolutely speculating because the process, chemical identity and appearance of the inks used to print that page are no known to you or anyone at this point, nor are they written down in that book. No source will tell you what process was used to print the color plates in that book. You cannot tell me if those colors are single pigments or mixes or which pigments they are. The only way you could is via some sort of chemical analysis. Maneesh (talk) 20:52, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no interest in, and make no claims about, what pigments might have gone into the inks. Dicklyon (talk) 21:48, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Color/Colour
I think that it doesn't matter which spelling we choose, as long as it's consistent within the article. However, according to the talk page this article is in American English, the title uses the American spelling and if you search for both spellings in the article, the American one is the most used. I see no reason to use the British spelling. If no one has any objections, I say we should just change the whole article to American English. Wikifan153 (talk) 09:04, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I see you did this already, thanks. Curran919 (talk) 11:23, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Short description
@Utter Donkey a short description is intended to be scanned quickly in order to distinguish it from similarly-titled articles. It is not intended to replace the lead sentence. A category usually suffices. From the linked page: "Editors should keep in mind that short descriptions are meant to distinguish an article from similarly named articles in search results, and not to define the subject."

Right now the short description reads as "Sets of colors that can be mixed to produce gamut of c...". Doing a search for "Primary color", the other results have the following short descriptions: "1998 American film", "1996 book by Joe Klein", "2004 studio album by Day After Tomorrow"

There is probably a short description that fits in with these more terse examples. Since you seem engaged I will trust your decision. Cheers Wizmut (talk) 16:07, 28 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I think a compromise is necessary between the two. The current is too wordy and yours is too short to be accurate. Lets workshop it. Considering that the article is primary color, perhaps: "a fundamental color in color mixing". Curran919 (talk) 07:56, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me, without the "a". Wizmut (talk) 02:49, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Article subsection cleanup?
I wanted to suggest the 2 separate sections on the RYB model be merged into one.

At the moment, it’s confusing having a second RYB subsection under history. I’d suggest combining the two and moving it under “Subtractive models”. I’m not sure why it’s a higher level section outside of subtractive models (I assume it happened as a result of the earlier RYB debate and just never got resolved) but it makes much more sense to add it under that subsection.

Leaving the Criticism portion as a subsection under the relocated RYB model section would be fine I think, or making it an additional subsection under Subtractive models? (Could be renamed “controversy” or “debate on subtractive models within art”?) I read a great article on this topic from an artistic perspective a couple years ago (discussing the benefits of using a CMY model in art vs. RYB) but unfortunately I don’t remember if I bookmarked it. I’ll drop it here if I can find it again.

I’d try to handle this stuff myself but I don’t trust my ability to write things clearly and concisely and health issues prevent me from taking on any additional projects right now (especially since there appears to be some disagreement on this article which may lead to further debate). Catfrost (talk) 00:18, 9 May 2024 (UTC)