What is Your Color Space? Part 2.
RGB

The RGB color space is the most common way we see color. It is not only the way color is mixed for televisions, computer monitors and digital cameras, but it is also the way our eyes view and our brains interpret the world around us.

This color space, called an Additive Color model, consist of the three primary colors red, green, and blue. An additive color model is one that involves light and uses overlapping primary colors to create all other colors by combining them in different intensities and ratios.

There are two major factors that make the RGB color model counterintuitive for printers, painters and designers who have to mix dyes, inks, and paints. The first is the difference in the primaries themselves. As we learned in grade school art class, our primaries in paint are Red, YELLOW, and blue, with green being achieved only by blending the yellow and blue primaries. Now being confronted with green as a primary, our color palette is thrown way off. How do we make yellow, a color we were taught was a primary?

That brings us to the second factor. Unlike paint, which gets darker as you add primaries, light does the opposite. Adding primary red and primary green gives us a bright yellow, which in light is a secondary color. And if we were to add primary blue to that mix, the area where all three overlap would be white (see photo).

Hint: An easy way to remember the difference between an additive and subtractive color model is to ask yourself, "how do I get to no color?" Light requires all primaries to be "added" together to get white, while pigment requires all color to be "subtracted" to reach white or the base color of the substrate.

Next:
CMYK