Why rgb and not cmy

Question

Seeing as how the three primary colors are cyan  magenta and yellow  CMY   why do monitors and almost all the GUI components out there use red  green and blue  RGB    If I m not mistaken  printers use the CMYK model    Is there a historical  hardware software  or other reason for it

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The difference lies in whether mixing colours results in LIGHTER or DARKER colours  When mixing light  the result is a lighter colour  so mixing red light and blue light becomes a lighter pink  When mixing paint  or ink   red and blue become a darker purple  Mixing paint results in DARKER colours  whereas mixing light results in LIGHTER colours  Therefore for paint the primary colours are Red Yellow Blue  or Cyan Magenta Yellow  as you stated  Yet for light the primary colours are Red Green Blue  It is  virtually  impossible to mix Red Green Blue paint into Yellow paint  or mixing Red Yellow Blue light into Green light

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There s a difference between additive colors  http   en wikipedia org wiki Additive color  and subtractive colors  http   en wikipedia org wiki Subtractive color    With additive colors  the more you add  the brighter the colors become  This is because they are emitting light  This is why the day light is  more or less  white  since the Sun is emitting in almost all the visible wavelength spectrum   On the other hand  with subtractive colors the more colors you mix  the darker the resulting color  This is because they are reflecting light  This is also why the black colors get hotter quickly  because it absorbs  almost  all light energy and reflects  almost  none   Specifically to your question  it depends what medium you are working on  Traditionally  additive colors  RGB  are used because the canon for computer graphics was the computer monitor  and since it s emitting light  it makes sense to use the same structure for the graphic card  the colors are shown without conversions   However  if you are used to graphic arts and press  subtractive color model is used  CMYK   In programs such as Photoshop  you can choose to work in CMYK space although it doesn t matter what color model you use  the primary colors of one group are the secondary colors of the second one and viceversa   P D   my father worked at graphic arts  this is why i know this     -P

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This is nothing to do with hardware nor software  Simply that RGB are the 3 primary colours which can be combined in various ways to produce every other colour  It is more about the human convention perception of colours which carried over   You may find this article interesting

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the 3 additive colors are in fact red  green  and blue  printers use cmyk  cyan  magenta  yellow  and black    and as http   en wikipedia org wiki Additive color explains  if you use RYB as your primary colors  how do you make green  since yellow is made from equal amounts of red and green

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The basic colours are RGB not RYB  Yes most of the softwares use the traditional RGB which can be used to mix together to form any other color i e  RGB are the fundamental colours  as defined in Physics  amp  Chemistry texts    The printer user CMYK  cyan  magenta  yellow  and black  coloring as said by  jcomeau ictx  You can view the following article to know about RGB vs CMYK  RGB Vs CMYK  A bit more information from the extract about them      Red  Green  and Blue are  additive   colors   If we combine red  green and   blue light you will get white light    This is the principal behind the T V    set in your living room and the   monitor you are staring at now     Additive color  or RGB mode  is   optimized for display on computer   monitors and peripherals  most notably   scanning devices       Cyan  Magenta and Yellow are    subtractive colors   If we print   cyan  magenta and yellow inks on white   paper  they absorb the light shining   on the page  Since our eyes receive no   reflected light from the paper  we   perceive black    in a perfect world     The printing world operates in   subtractive color  or CMYK mode

[colors] Why rgb and not cmy?

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