In other words, we see white from which yellow has subtracted blue and cyan has subtracted red. Where the yellow and cyan overlap, we see the subtractive mixture of yellow and cyan. In the circle at right, the green and blue pixels are kept at maximum while the red pixels vary, so the colour at right goes from cyan (=green+blue) to white and back again.

In the top circle, the red and green pixels are kept at maximum, while the blue pixels vary from zero to maximum and back again, so that the colour at the top varies from yellow (=red+green) to white (=red+green+blue) and back again. The background is white, meaning that the red, green and blue pixels all emit maximum light, and our animation subtracts from this white background. The animation above left shows subtractive mixing. In the centre, where all three circles overlap, we see red+green+blue=white. In the bottom circle, the blue pixels vary, so we see, at left, blue+red=magenta and, at right, blue+green=cyan. Where they overlap, we see red+green= yellow. In the circle at top right, the green pixels vary. In the circle at top left, the red pixels vary from maximum to zero and back again. The background is black, meaning that none of the pixels emit light, and our animation adds light over that black background.

Colour mixing with additive and subtractive primariesĬolour mixing with additive and subtractive primaries The animation below right shows additive mixing.This page supports the multimedia tutorials The Nature of Light and The Eye and Colour Vision. The animation at right mixes the three additive primaries using your RGB monitor. We show how this is done on an RGB monitor (additive) and using paints and filters (subtractive). Additive primaries (red, green and blue) or subtractive primaries (cyan, magenta, yellow) can be mixed to make a very large, but not complete, set of colours.

Hex color mixer