About
A subtractive combination of colors, as in mixing of pigments, inks or dyes for painting or printing.
Subtraction comes from the fact that when the light is reflected on the surface, it's filtered.
Subtractive primaries color are also known as Minus color
On a color wheel, they are located a 120 degree of each other.
For any colorspace, the plus color (ie additive color) are the opposites (complementray color) of the minus color
This mixing are valid for all subtractive colorspaces (even if the most known is CYMK): <MATH> \begin{array}{rrrl} & & blue & + & red & = & purple \\ & & blue & + & yellow & = & green \\ & & red & + & yellow & = & orange \\ \end{array} </MATH>
Colorspace
CMYK
Printers and others who use modern subtractive color methods and terminology use mostly as subtractive primaries color:
- magenta,
- and cyan.
This is known as the Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Colorspace
Note that as:
- the opposites (complementray color) of cyan magenta, and yellow are red, green, and blue,
- the opposite colorspace of Cyan Magenta Yellow Colorspace is the RGB colorspace
RYB
In a RYB colorspace, the subtractive primaries color are:
