Color theory explained

ArtistAssistApp has an advanced color mixing algorithm based on traditional color theory to avoid muddy and dull color mixtures.

All your color mixtures will be clean and vibrant or pleasant muted colors.

Traditional color theory describes primary, secondary, intermediate, and tertiary colors.

With the three primary colors lemon yellow, cyan (blue) and magenta (red) we can mix any color hue we wish.

These colors are called primary because they cannot be mixed from other colors.

A secondary color is a color made by mixing two primary colors in even proportions.

We mix yellow with blue to get green, blue with red to get violet and red with yellow to get orange.

That gives us three secondary colors: green, violet and orange.

An intermediate color is any mixture of a primary color and a related secondary color.

There are 6 main intermediate colors: red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and red-violet.

Changing the proportions of the mixture gives countless intermediate colors.

A tertiary color is an even mixture between two secondary colors.

Two secondary colors combined also contain the three primary colors.

It's a mixture of three primaries in 1:2:1 proportion.

Two secondary colors do not cancel each other out completely and we do not obtain dark gray.

The common primary color is always dominant and hence determines the color.

Tertiary colors are less saturated and a bit gray or brown.

There are three tertiary colors: green-violet, green-orange, violet-orange.

Complementary colors are pairs of colors that, when mixed, cancel each other out and form desaturated, neutral color close gray.

A complementary color pair contains one primary color (yellow, blue or red) and a secondary color (green, purple or orange).

Two complementary colors together contain the three primary colors.

The complement of any primary color can be made by combining the two other primary colors.

The primary-secondary complementary pairs are red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and violet.

We can mix the colors that we need to paint all the objects that surround us without black.

If we mix primary colors in the right proportion we create a dark-gray.

This is because in the mixing only the jointly reflected section of the spectrum remains.

This dark-gray is dark enough to create the impression of black in a painting.

The three-color mixing system has the limitation that the saturation of intermediate colors may be greatly reduced.

Lemon yellow is a yellow with blue traces. Cyan is a blue with yellow traces. Magenta is a red with blue traces.

The violets mixed from cyan blue and magenta contain, in addition to blue and pink, the yellow traces of the blue. Yellow and violet are complementary colors.

Yellow and violet make gray when mixed, so that the violets are less saturated.

The saturation of the oranges is sharply reduced as a result of the blue complementary traces of both pink and yellow.

Only the greens are saturated. The color hue of both lemon yellow and cyan blue have no traces which do not belong to the green part of the spectrum.

To have only saturated colors, we add three new colors: ultramarine (a blue with red traces), a yellow with red traces and a red with yellow traces.

Orange and violet are now also saturated.

By adding white or diluting the paint the brightness of a color can be changed.

The difference between the three color and the six color mixing systems can be clearly seen on the "Limited palette" tab.