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Wow, just wow. This is what happens when someone who knows a little bit about how the eyes and brain interpret colour decides to write an article where they fi

Wow, just wow. This is what happens when someone who knows a little bit about how the eyes and brain interpret colour decides to write an article where they fill their gaps of knowledge with mistakes instead of doing some research. Since the author wanted to talk about the eye, they should have kept to additive colour only and not tried to be confusing by introducing subtractive colour, which they neither understand or present factually.

idspispopd 14y ago
Here's a few of the factual errors: >They’ll launch into a treatise about how the Three Primary Colors They'll try to teach you Subtractive colour theory. Artists don't actually work in three primaries, however the idea of 3 primaries form the basis of subtractive colour theory. An artists knows you simply don't get brighter colours out of darker ones. >Primary Colors produces the Secondary Colors (orange, green, and purple): The colours shown here are additive colour mixes, not subtractive. E.g. Magenta is not Purple. Purple has a single wavelength, magenta does not. >infamous color wheel you probably learned in school It's based on Goethe's colour wheel, it's artistic not scientific. (As limited by the few amounts of colours available in earlier times.) Although it's still a decent representation of colour than the result this author produced. >Doesn't stand up to scrutiny/ Three colors of ink which, when combined, produce all others: cyan, magenta, and yellow. (Black is included as a money-saver — black is the cheapest and most common color; it’s cheaper to have a black cartridge than to dump ink from the other three.) CMYK does not produce a full gamut of colour, not anywhere near it. Black is not included as a money saver, but because CMY simply doesn't produce a decent 'black' and there can be registration issues. What CMYK does produce is a nice compromise of commonly occurring colours, however you won't get a vivid blue, green or red out of it - there is simply no building blocks in those colours to produce a good version of each. Instead you'll get a purplish blue, a yellowy green and an orangey red. This is why printers have 'spot colours'. >But wait! I thought the “Primary” colors were red, blue, and yellow, not cyan (bluish-green), magenta (bluish-red), and yellow. Not only does the diagram falsely misrepresent the results of mixing of CMY colours(e.g. it should be a dark mess in the centre), but it also falsely represents the individual colours themselves. It's actually pretty difficult to get a computer screen to display a true Cyan, which is not, in any stretch of the imagination "bluish-green". At this stage the author has created a bunch of confusion, seemingly his own because he doesn't truly understand what is going on here. The actual difference between additive and subtractive colour aren't explored or explained. There are lots of common school boy mistakes like assuming subtractive mixing produces similar colours to additive mixing, e.g. he shows that purple is akin to magenta(it's not), or that you can get any colour your want out of mixing three primaries(you can't). Or that RGB, or CMY allows for a full gamut (neither do.) >This isn’t adding up. Let’s turn to science. From here the article gets better, but it trips a few times before getting to actual physiology. For a short while he talks about the 'magenta' problem, which actually is well resolved. It's called an extra-spectral colour, it's not generated via a single wavelength, but rather the absence of wavelengths from white light. Oddly later he mentions this. >Opposites "Complements" rather, are well resolved scientifically, there are two sets of complements and two colour wheels to demo these. Since he's talking about eyes, he should just focus on additive colour. The wheel the author has created is utter rubbish, it skips swaths of wavelengths and is only interested in preserving 'opposites', which are represented by incorrect renditions of those colours anyway.
- barrkel 14y ago
  In a way I appreciate your pedantry (though not your tone), but I must also say that the details you add seem to be technical, specific to printing and not particularly important to the point of the post.
  - idspispopd 14y ago
    Half the article is about subtractive colour, which happens to be print/painting/any kind of colour mixing which isn't combining light sources. The author (is it you?) has done zero research on the topics they don't understand, and deserves any amount of critical writing in response. The whole point of the internet is that it represented the end of people waffling bullshit, access to accurate information is there, and if people want to run around spreading incorrect information they deserve to be taken down as many notches as possible. I might also add that this is important to the authors conclusion, should the author has done any real research they'd see that not only does a colour wheel that addresses their concern exist, but that they've misrepresented the foundation of their entire argument to begin with.
    - leephillips 14y ago
      But every one of his illustrations has a "pin" button on it. And that's really the point, isn't it?
    - nollidge 14y ago
      I believe the author goes by "asmartbear" or something similar here on HN.
devindotcom 14y ago
Yeah, I started interested, like maybe there was a new take on this, but when he pulled out CMYK that way, I knew there was trouble. Thanks for pointing out the specifics.
rel 14y ago
Yeah, I felt the exact same way. The combination of pseudoscience, blatent speculation, and lack of research made me want to barf.
Evbn 14y ago
Bears are partly color blind,like dogs. This article is a smart bear's perspective.

idspispopd 14y ago

Here's a few of the factual errors: >They’ll launch into a treatise about how the Three Primary Colors They'll try to teach you Subtractive colour theory. Artists don't actually work in three primaries, however the idea of 3 primaries form the basis of subtractive colour theory. An artists knows you simply don't get brighter colours out of darker ones. >Primary Colors produces the Secondary Colors (orange, green, and purple): The colours shown here are additive colour mixes, not subtractive. E.g. Magenta is not Purple. Purple has a single wavelength, magenta does not. >infamous color wheel you probably learned in school It's based on Goethe's colour wheel, it's artistic not scientific. (As limited by the few amounts of colours available in earlier times.) Although it's still a decent representation of colour than the result this author produced. >Doesn't stand up to scrutiny/ Three colors of ink which, when combined, produce all others: cyan, magenta, and yellow. (Black is included as a money-saver — black is the cheapest and most common color; it’s cheaper to have a black cartridge than to dump ink from the other three.) CMYK does not produce a full gamut of colour, not anywhere near it. Black is not included as a money saver, but because CMY simply doesn't produce a decent 'black' and there can be registration issues. What CMYK does produce is a nice compromise of commonly occurring colours, however you won't get a vivid blue, green or red out of it - there is simply no building blocks in those colours to produce a good version of each. Instead you'll get a purplish blue, a yellowy green and an orangey red. This is why printers have 'spot colours'. >But wait! I thought the “Primary” colors were red, blue, and yellow, not cyan (bluish-green), magenta (bluish-red), and yellow. Not only does the diagram falsely misrepresent the results of mixing of CMY colours(e.g. it should be a dark mess in the centre), but it also falsely represents the individual colours themselves. It's actually pretty difficult to get a computer screen to display a true Cyan, which is not, in any stretch of the imagination "bluish-green". At this stage the author has created a bunch of confusion, seemingly his own because he doesn't truly understand what is going on here. The actual difference between additive and subtractive colour aren't explored or explained. There are lots of common school boy mistakes like assuming subtractive mixing produces similar colours to additive mixing, e.g. he shows that purple is akin to magenta(it's not), or that you can get any colour your want out of mixing three primaries(you can't). Or that RGB, or CMY allows for a full gamut (neither do.) >This isn’t adding up. Let’s turn to science. From here the article gets better, but it trips a few times before getting to actual physiology. For a short while he talks about the 'magenta' problem, which actually is well resolved. It's called an extra-spectral colour, it's not generated via a single wavelength, but rather the absence of wavelengths from white light. Oddly later he mentions this. >Opposites "Complements" rather, are well resolved scientifically, there are two sets of complements and two colour wheels to demo these. Since he's talking about eyes, he should just focus on additive colour. The wheel the author has created is utter rubbish, it skips swaths of wavelengths and is only interested in preserving 'opposites', which are represented by incorrect renditions of those colours anyway.

barrkel 14y ago
In a way I appreciate your pedantry (though not your tone), but I must also say that the details you add seem to be technical, specific to printing and not particularly important to the point of the post.
- idspispopd 14y ago
  Half the article is about subtractive colour, which happens to be print/painting/any kind of colour mixing which isn't combining light sources. The author (is it you?) has done zero research on the topics they don't understand, and deserves any amount of critical writing in response. The whole point of the internet is that it represented the end of people waffling bullshit, access to accurate information is there, and if people want to run around spreading incorrect information they deserve to be taken down as many notches as possible. I might also add that this is important to the authors conclusion, should the author has done any real research they'd see that not only does a colour wheel that addresses their concern exist, but that they've misrepresented the foundation of their entire argument to begin with.
  - leephillips 14y ago
    But every one of his illustrations has a "pin" button on it. And that's really the point, isn't it?
  - nollidge 14y ago
    I believe the author goes by "asmartbear" or something similar here on HN.

devindotcom 14y ago

Yeah, I started interested, like maybe there was a new take on this, but when he pulled out CMYK that way, I knew there was trouble. Thanks for pointing out the specifics.

rel 14y ago

Yeah, I felt the exact same way. The combination of pseudoscience, blatent speculation, and lack of research made me want to barf.

Evbn 14y ago

Bears are partly color blind,like dogs. This article is a smart bear's perspective.