Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] A geeky ramble on "cyan" and "green plus blue"

  • FromKarl von Laudermann <karlvonl@xxxxxxx>
  • DateSat, 8 Sep 2007 12:15:23 -0400
On Sep 7, 2007, at 12:42 PM, Carl Worth wrote:

So, now I just checked with wikipedia and my confusion became quite
clear:

	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyan

The cyan I learned, (from a computer graphics background), wikipedia
calls "electric cyan", "web color aqua", "electrical blue". This is a
secondary color in an additive color system with red, green, and blue
primaries, (it is 100% green + 100% blue). That's the cyan I've always
known and loved.

Meanwhile, there's another color there called "process cyan", "pigment
cyan", or "printer's cyan" which is a primary color in the subtractive
CMY system used for printing. And indeed _this_ color, (meaning, the
particular RGB formulation that wikipedia demonstrates), does look
very much like a "cyan" pyramid from Xeno set I have here.

I must disagree with you here. I checked out the Wikipedia page that you linked to, and held up a Cyan Icehouse piece to my computer monitor, and to my eyes the color of the pyramid is closer to the "electric cyan" color. In fact, the effect is more pronounced if you pick up a large piece and look *through* it at the web page; the color of the piece effectively filters out the "electric cyan" colored rectangle from the page (especially if you look through two faces simultaneously instead of just one), while the "process cyan" rectangle shows through as a darker blue.

Of course, the colors on my monitor might vary from those on yours.

--
                Karl von Laudermann
                karlvonl@xxxxxxx
                http://www.geocities.com/~karlvonl/