Datasheet

With subtractive color mixing for painting, the traditional color wheel’s primary colors
are red, blue, and green. These three pigments can be mixed together to form any other color
pigment. This is the basis for the color wheel most people are exposed to in art education.
However, in the world of print production, a CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and blacK)
color wheel is used, which places cyan, yellow, and magenta ink colors as the primary col-
ors used to mix all the other ink colors for print work.
Projected light, however, is mixed as additive color. Each light’s frequency adds upon
another’s to form color. The additive primary colors are red, green, and blue. These three
colors, when mixed in certain ratios, form the entire range of color. When all are equally
mixed together, they form a white light.
A computer monitor uses only additive color, mixing each color with amounts of red,
green, and blue (RGB). Output for print is converted to a CMYK color model.
Warm colors are those in the magenta to red to yellow range, and cool colors are those in
the green to cyan to blue range of the additive color wheel. Warm colors seem to advance
from the frame, and cool colors seem to recede into the frame.
HOW A COMPUTER DEFINES COLOR
Computers represent all information, including color, as sets of numeric values made up
of binary 0s and 1s (bits). In a 24-bit depth RGB color image, each pixel is represented by
three 8-bit values corresponding to the red, green, and blue “channels” of the image. An
8-bit binary number can range from 0 to 255, so for each primary color you have 256 pos-
sible levels. With three channels you have 256 × 256 × 256 (16.7 million) possible combi-
nations of each primary color mixed to form the final color.
But color value can also be set on the hue, saturation, and value (HSV) channels of a
color. Again, each channel holds a value from 0 to 255 (in a 24-bit image) that defines the
final color. The hue value defines the actual tint (from red to green to violet) of the color.
The saturation defines how much of that tint is present in the color. The higher the satura-
tion value, the deeper the color. Finally, value defines the brightness of the color, from
black to white. The higher the value, the brighter the color.
HSV and RGB give you different methods to control color, allowing you to use the
method you prefer. All the colors available in Maya, from textures to lights, are defined as
either RGB or HSV values for the best flexibility. You can switch from HSV to RGB defini-
tion in Maya at any time.
CMYK COLOR SPACE
A CMYK color wheel is used for print work, and this is referred to as the four-color process.
Color inkjet printers produce color printouts by mixing the appropriate levels of these
inks onto the paper.
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