(Kevin Brooks) wrote:

If you're dealing with paint it would be red, blue and yellow (or Cyan,
Magenta and Yellow)

RGB corresponds to the color detectors in the retina.

With paint, as in having it mixed at the hardware store, one uses a bunch of
colors, like 10 or 12 to form a polygon in the color space and give a much
larger pallet of colors. Just RGB or CMY gives a triangle and leaves out a lot
of the perceivable colors. See any chromaticity diagram (which is three
dimmensional and usually shown as two with shading for the third).

It is possible to "see" colors that do not exist in the electromagnetic
spectrum, like brown. Likewise, the orange from red+yellow is a product of the
brain and retina as opposed to an orange spectral line from a sodium lamp. They
look the same to us but a simple filter will show the difference.

So, what and NVG will react to can be auite different from what the eye alone
will react to.

Most of modern color/brain theory comes from work by Land who found ways to
"fool" the brain into seeing full color with just two colors in the projection.

Photographers talk about addititive and subtractive colors depending on whether
a process uses primary dyes or filtering gels.

But we are not dealing with paint (for which the proper selection is
the latter, IIRC). BRBR

-- Charlie Springer

The Feynmann is of course a very good reference.