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Color triangle
 
 
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A color triangle is an arrangement of color
Color

Color or colour is the visual perception property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others....
s within a triangle
Triangle

A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a polygon with three corners or wikt:vertex and three sides or edges which are line segments....
, based on the additive
Additive color

An additive color model involves light emitted directly from a source or illuminant of some sort. The additive reproduction process usually uses red, green and blue light to produce the other colors....
 combination of three primary color
Primary color

Primary colors are sets of colors that can be combined to make a useful range of colors. For human applications, three are often used; for additive combination of colors, as in overlapping projected lights or in cathode ray tube displays, the primary colors normally used are red, green, and blue....
s at its corners.

An additive color space
Color space

A color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colors can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values or color components ....
 defined by three primary colors has a chromaticity
Chromaticity

Chromaticity is an objective specification of the quality of a color regardless of its luminance, that is, as determined by its colorfulness and hue....
 gamut
Gamut

In color reproduction, including computer graphics and photography, the gamut, or color gamut , is a certain complete subset of colors....
 that is a color triangle, when the amounts of the primaries are constrained to be nonnegative.

Before the theory of additive color was proposed by Thomas Young
Thomas Young

Thomas Young may refer to:*Thomas Young , Scottish Presbyterian and author*Thomas Young , member of the Sons of Liberty*Thomas Young , British polymath, scientist and Egyptologist...
 and further developed by James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell was a Scotland Mathematical physics. His most significant achievement was the development of the classical electromagnetic theory, synthesizing all previous unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and even optics into a consistent theory....
 and Hermann von Helmholtz
Hermann von Helmholtz

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a Germany physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science....
, triangles were also used to organize colors, for example around a system of red, yellow, and blue primary colors
RYB color model

RYB is a historical set of subtractive color primary colors. It is primarily used in art and design education, particularly painting. It predates modern scientific color theory....
.

After the development of the CIE system
CIE 1931 color space

In the study of the perception of color, one of the first mathematically defined color spaces was the CIE 1931 XYZ color space , created by the International Commission on Illumination in 1931....
, color triangles were used as chromaticity diagrams, including briefly with the trilinear coordinates representing the chromaticity values.






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Ciexy1931 Srgb Gamut
A color triangle is an arrangement of color
Color

Color or colour is the visual perception property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others....
s within a triangle
Triangle

A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a polygon with three corners or wikt:vertex and three sides or edges which are line segments....
, based on the additive
Additive color

An additive color model involves light emitted directly from a source or illuminant of some sort. The additive reproduction process usually uses red, green and blue light to produce the other colors....
 combination of three primary color
Primary color

Primary colors are sets of colors that can be combined to make a useful range of colors. For human applications, three are often used; for additive combination of colors, as in overlapping projected lights or in cathode ray tube displays, the primary colors normally used are red, green, and blue....
s at its corners.

An additive color space
Color space

A color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colors can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values or color components ....
 defined by three primary colors has a chromaticity
Chromaticity

Chromaticity is an objective specification of the quality of a color regardless of its luminance, that is, as determined by its colorfulness and hue....
 gamut
Gamut

In color reproduction, including computer graphics and photography, the gamut, or color gamut , is a certain complete subset of colors....
 that is a color triangle, when the amounts of the primaries are constrained to be nonnegative.

Before the theory of additive color was proposed by Thomas Young
Thomas Young

Thomas Young may refer to:*Thomas Young , Scottish Presbyterian and author*Thomas Young , member of the Sons of Liberty*Thomas Young , British polymath, scientist and Egyptologist...
 and further developed by James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell was a Scotland Mathematical physics. His most significant achievement was the development of the classical electromagnetic theory, synthesizing all previous unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and even optics into a consistent theory....
 and Hermann von Helmholtz
Hermann von Helmholtz

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a Germany physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science....
, triangles were also used to organize colors, for example around a system of red, yellow, and blue primary colors
RYB color model

RYB is a historical set of subtractive color primary colors. It is primarily used in art and design education, particularly painting. It predates modern scientific color theory....
.

After the development of the CIE system
CIE 1931 color space

In the study of the perception of color, one of the first mathematically defined color spaces was the CIE 1931 XYZ color space , created by the International Commission on Illumination in 1931....
, color triangles were used as chromaticity diagrams, including briefly with the trilinear coordinates representing the chromaticity values. Since the sum of the three chromaticity values has a fixed value, it suffices to depict only two of the three values, using Cartesian co-ordinates. In the modern x,y diagram, the large triangle bounded by the imaginary primaries X, Y, and Z has corners (1,0), (0,1), and (0,0), respectively; color triangles with real primaries are often shown within this space.

Maxwell's disc

Maxwell was intrigued by James David Forbes
James David Forbes

James David Forbes Royal Society was a Scotland physicist who worked extensively on the heat conduction, seismology and glaciology. Forbes was a resident of Edinburgh for most of his life, educated at the University of Edinburgh and a professor there from 1833 until he became principal of the United College of St....
's use of color top
Top

A top, or spinning top, is a toy that can be spun on an axis, balancing on a point. This motion is produced by holding the axis firmly while pulling a string....
s. By rapidly spinning the top, Forbes created the illusion of a single color that was a mixture of the primaries:

Maxwell took this a step further by using a circular scale around the rim with which to measure the ratios of the primaries, choosing vermilion
Vermilion

Vermilion, sometimes spelled vermillion, when found naturally occurring, is an opaque Orange ish red pigment, used since antiquity, originally derived from the powdered mineral cinnabar....
 (V), emerald (EG), and ultramarine
Ultramarine

File:Pigment Violet 15.jpgUltramarine is a blue pigment consisting primarily of a double silicate of aluminium and sodium with some sulfides or sulfates, and occurring in nature as a proximate component of lapis lazuli....
 (U).

Initially, he compared the color he observed on the spinning top with a paper of different color, in order to find a match. Later, he mounted a pair of papers, snow white
Snow White

Snow White is the title fictional character of a fairy tale known from many countries in Europe, the best known version being the German one collected by the Brothers Grimm....
 (SW) and ivory black (Bk), in an inner circle, thereby creating shades of gray. By adjusting the ratio of primaries, he matched the observed gray of the inner wheel, for example:

To determine the chromaticity of an arbitrary color, he replaced one of the primaries with a sample of the test color and adjusted the ratios until he found a match. For pale chrome (PC) he found . Next, he rearranged the equation to express the test color (PC, in this example) in terms of the primaries.

This would be the precursor to the color matching functions
CIE 1931 color space

In the study of the perception of color, one of the first mathematically defined color spaces was the CIE 1931 XYZ color space , created by the International Commission on Illumination in 1931....
 of the CIE 1931 color space
CIE 1931 color space

In the study of the perception of color, one of the first mathematically defined color spaces was the CIE 1931 XYZ color space , created by the International Commission on Illumination in 1931....
, whose chromaticity diagram is shown above.

See also

  • Color wheel
    Color wheel

    A color wheel or color circle is an organization of color hues around a circle, showing relationships between colors considered to be primary colors, secondary colors, complementary colors, etc....