Talk:Primary color

Reverts on red, black and white as primaries

Dicklyon claims "That makes no sense; and the sources doesn't mention pigments in relation to these color concepts" with the edit that added red, back and white as primaries and cited a paper by Gage. Here is the full quote:

Red, yellow and blue are not, of course, the only 'primary' triad, or even the most privileged one. The much older and more universal set, black, white and red, has recently come into prominence again in anthropological studies of language, chiefly in connection with the evolution of non-European cultures, where the earliest colour-categories were those of light and dark, followed almost universally by a term for 'red'.20 But this triad also has a long history in the IndoGermanic languages and their cultures; as readers of Grimm's fairy-tale, Snow White will recall, where the heroine was compounded of these three colourS.21 In early abstract painting this set had an especially prominent place in Russia, in the first school of geometric abstraction, the Suprematism of Malevich. In an essay of 1920 Malevich divided his movement into three phases, according to the proportion of black, red and white squares introduced into its pictures.

So, how was early abstract painting done in Russia without pigments? Looking at Malevich's paintings, many (but not all) of the 'Suprematism' ones seem to be made of only of red, black or white. Maneesh (talk) 07:14, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't know what this was in reference to. Dicklyon (talk) 05:53, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

His pigment usage is sometimes analyzed online, e.g. at this ColourLex page, which says of one painting:

The following pigments were employed in this painting:

Red: vermilion

Yellow: cadmium yellow and chrome yellow

Green: long green line in the upper part of the composition is painted in emerald green, the two small green rectangles at the very bottom are painted in the mixture of Prussian blue and chrome yellow.

Blue: cobalt blue and artificial ultramarine

so I guess it wasn't done without pigments in general. Dicklyon (talk) 01:16, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Ref errors

Two of the refs have oddly formatted years and generating errors:

• Ball, Philip (2002 [2001]). Bright earth : art and the invention of color (1st American ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

• Newton, Isaac (19 February 1671/2). "A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton … containing his New Theory about Light and Color". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (80): 3075–3087. Retrieved 19 November 2020. The Original or primary colours are, Red, Yellow, Green, Blew, and a Violet-purple, together with Orange, Indico, and an indefinite variety of Intermediate gradations.

The Newton ref really is formatted like that across a year. Don't know exactly why the Ball ref comes back like that from cross ref. Can anyone suggest the appropriate fix? Maneesh (talk) 17:03, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Primary color/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: ArnabSaha (talk · contribs) 07:25, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

2. Is it verifiable with no original research?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:

   C. It contains no original research:

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Comments

• A lot of close paraphrasing. 2 links with more than 95% Violation. But it also seems like a backward copy.
• There are small small grammatical/spelling issues everywhere. Like articles, determiners etc missing.
• Somewhere Color-space written with hyphen, somewhere without.
• MoS issues are prominent.
• Things mentioned in the lead isn't covered in the body.
• Avoid citation in lead as per WP:CITELEAD.
• Lack of wikilinks.
• Now coming to the biggest issue. The article is unsourced at multiple parts. "Subtractive mixing of ink layers" section is unsourced. Other areas like "show how the additive mixing...", "The exact colors chosen for...", "Organizations such as Fogra...", "The color of light...". As per GA criteria, each and everything needs to be sourced properly.
• In the citations, the paras aren't required. Just provide page numbers of the books and other materials.
• A citation has parameter issue.
• Avoid using blogs as sources as tehy aren't considered reliable.
• The last image is eating up into the Reference section. Use Template:Clear in the 2nd last section.
• Any external links?

When these issues are addressed, the article can be renominated. If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to have it reassessed. Thank you for your work so far. Thank you for your work so far.  Saha ❯❯❯ Stay safe  12:29, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

@ArnabSaha: I think these are really great suggestions. Shoring up cites rooted out some presumed facts being wrong. I've partially implemented corrections some but clarification on 'lack of wiki links': there seem to be a lot of them to my eyes (though I added more). I may be missing some, but every single notable name is wiki-linked, as are color space terms, even terms like 'bird' etc. Where is this suggestion coming from? Is there any guideline to suggest that providing quotes in citations is not desirable? For many of the claims in this article, it seems quite sensible to pull out the quote support the claim directly. As for sourcing, for claims like "Organizations such as Fogra...", these seem tricky. I've added a url ref to Fogra (since there is no wp page), but the other organizations have wp pages that support the claim that they publish color standards. Is the wiki link not enough to support the claim in sentences like these? To be sure, handprint is source that is cited extensively in this article (this entire article could mapped inside handprint), it wouldn't be correct to characterize it as a blog. It's a rather exceptional (and accessible) color science resource that is used by others. The two cites that are having problems with year formatting seem to be tricky...e.g. the bibliographic info for Newton's ref seem to be spread across two years "1671/2"...if you have any suggestions to fix that would be great. Many thanks for your review efforts.Maneesh (talk) 03:13, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

The RYB POV problem

@ArnabSaha: The article as massaged by Maneesh still has a serious POV problem in the way it tries to only denegrate and demote the "traditional" RYB primaries. I made a small step in a good direction by factored out some of the criticism into a subsection in Primary_color#Red,_yellow,_and_blue_as_primary_colors_in_art_education. Readers who are not into color science come here expecting to see something about the "color theory" primaries of red, yellow, and blue, but all they get is RGB and CMY and criticism of the loonies who don't know enough of "color science" to relegate "color theory" to the dustbin. As a color scientist myself, I think there's more to color than colorimetry and color science, but Maneesh pretty much denies that in his very POV editing, which I have fought on and off over the last years. We need to resolve this before getting to GA status. I haven't had the energy to keep fighting him, but see the article history for my many attempts if you want to get an idea of the disconnect. Dicklyon (talk) 01:02, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

I've added most of the RYB material (sourced quite well) under the history section. No sense in rehashing what we've already discussed but this is an invitation to anyone to take a look at see how one would represent "red, yellow and blue as the primary colors" more fairly to suggest sources that they would add and where the associated claims would go. Maneesh (talk) 06:26, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

The trouble is not that what you say is well sourced, but that what you say is strongly slanted to the POV that RYB is no good. There's no neutral discussion of traditional color theory, which you've reverted every time I tried to move in that direction. We can't get to GA until we include a fair representation of the traditional RYB primaries. Dicklyon (talk) 04:38, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

I've already said this here, probably many times but I am entirely skeptical that "traditional color theory" means anything outside a very vague notion of "red, yellow, and blue are primary colors". The material in this history section is a very detailed look at "red, yellow, and blue are primary colors" attributing specific people in specific times representative of high quality underlying sources across color science and art history. Even low quality claims/sources about "red, yellow, and blue are primary colors" are presented neutrally in "art education". The quality of such claims is easily assessed against the claims that come from higher quality sources in the article. There is no disparagement from the article text, the disparagement comes from WP:RS like Munsell (rightly so!). I can't think of any mention of "traditional color theory" in the high quality comprehensive sources that support this article from authors like Gage, Shamey, Kuehni, Mollon, Fairchild etc. Briggs and MacEvoy use "traditional color theory" to give a name to the bubbling tar pit of incoherent reasoning about color we can easily find in low quality sources . None of the sources that I know in that tar pit are at all encyclopedic. "Traditional color theory" isn't the tool of painters who use "realistic color"; this type of painting is a craft and, as Gage explains, vague theories of color (seldom put forth by painters) are not easily reconciled with the craft. I really don't believe one can represent "traditional color theory" at the same level of quality/support/coherence as the material that is here, but I am happy to leave you to it. I've mostly added what I've wanted to add here. If there is a serious disagreement between whatever "traditional color theory" material is there after a month or so, we can open an RfC or something to try and resolve. Maneesh (talk) 06:55, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

The traditional color theory has RYB as conceptual primaries, and sometimes makes claims about mixing all colors, but yeah, that part of it is weak compared to what color scientists have figured out about how to make large gamuts with three primaries. Still, it's so big out in the real world, as a concept, that if all we do is say who disparages it, that's not neutral. I will add some stuff, working from the recent O'Connor overview paper. Dicklyon (talk) 01:11, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but it's wrong, so let's get over it. RYB are NOT primary colours because of basic human biology. 142.188.188.167 (talk) 06:47, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

And RYB is currently treated just as a bit of History, in a subsection of that section. I argue that it's still very much a current concept; some evidence for that is the frequency with which readers correct RGB to RYB all over the place. The existence of modern color science does not make traditional color theory go away. Dicklyon (talk) 01:16, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you Dicklyon. And thanks for the elaboration. It helps a lot to learn for future reviews.  Saha ❯❯❯ Stay safe  17:37, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

RYB still sticks around because of poor education, and substituting yellow in paints so colours mix more predictably. Just because lots of people are mistaken, doesn't mean it's valid. RGB are the primary colours, period. That's how our eyes see the world, hence why they are the primary colours. 142.188.188.167 (talk) 06:49, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I've started a section at Primary color#Traditional red, yellow, and blue primary colors. Comments and improvements are welcome. Dicklyon (talk) 00:57, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Dicklyon has introduced a "Traditional red, yellow, and blue primary colors" section after complaining that the article is not neutral on that regard and that I was preventing him from adding that material. I have abstained from editing for about a month to address his grievances and to ensure he has enough time to add and improve the material without interference. Unfortunately, the new section is very problematic, isn't integrated in a sensible way and seems rooted strongly held misconceptions. Many of the points below have been made before (multiple times) on this talk page and easily understood by reading the key sources that are, and have long been, in the article..

Other editors now need to now critically assess the claims in the section that Dicklyon has added. This debate has been long running, with few other participants and there should be a consensus to settle the matter for a time. Historical claims of "red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors" ("RYB primaries") are described in detail in the article outside the section that has been added in a WP:NPOV, accurate way that is representative of what you can find in WP:RS from both art history and color science. "RYB primaries" is either a matter of notable historic claims or a widely held misconception found in "art education" materials since the 18th century or so which typically have little coherence or consistency on these ideas. There is no other legitimate way to frame "RYB primaries" outside of those general perspectives that are represented and supported in this article.

"RYB primaries" is not (and has never been) a notable heuristic of any tradition of painting practice that involves mixing large diverse gamuts of color (what is done in "realistic" painting). Such painting is a craft (with little documentation about the process behind it relative to its prominence). The historical claims about primaries in general, mostly by non-painters, vary and are difficult to reconcile with what is known about the craft (Gage's "Fortunes Of Apelles" is a comprehensive high quality source that supports this). The idea that it is well known that one can paint realistic paintings with just a few pigments (not just "RYB primaries") is covered under "Mixing paints in limited palettes". It is also covered appropriately since I can't think of a notable realistic painting that was made with "RYB primaries" as we seldom know the identities of all the pigments that were used in a particular painting. You might mention Piet Mondrian or Kadinsky, but they are using "RYB primaries" descriptively.

The "Color Mixing Guide" now shown in the article does not say what the caption of the associated figure says (WP:CHERRYPICKING, WP:STICKTOSOURCE). The cover suggests (but does not claim) that "all known colors" can be mixed from three "RYB primaries". The color plate only makes the claim that red, yellow, and blue (apparently shown as cyan, magenta and yellow in at least in some editions) were used to mix the modest set of "all colors in this "color chart"" (not "all known colors" as the caption claims). What does this source actually say about "all known colors"?:

With the following colors at hand all known colors may be obtained. Lemon yellow, which is of greenish hue; yellow of orange hue; red with orange hue; red which has a bluish cast. Blue with a reddish tone, also blue with a leaning toward green. A liberal supply of white and some black which does not contain blue.

It doesn't even list the pigments...rather odd given the book doesn't seem to be a lot more than a list of pigments. These vaguely specified primary colors are exactly *not* pure "RYB primaries" and they include white and black. WP:BLUESKY that you can't mix the most chromatic single pigment reds, yellows and blues from such pigments. This sort of inconsistency and incoherence is emblematic of muddy color thinking in low quality sources and has been long recognized as such. I don't think there is a WP:RS that tells us what inks were used in the color plates of any edition of "Color Mixing" (in this article: "...the red and blue pigments used in illustrative materials such as the Color Mixing Guide..."), the article should not speculate on their identity (WP:OR).

The O'Connor paper cited and entry that is quoted in this section is telling simple fibs, quite obvious to anyone with mere familiarity with the basics of what is known about color. The section tries to pass off the idea that the RYB system, whatever it is, and "traditional color theory" are synonyms. Was the O'Connor source read thoroughly? The paper defines "traditional color theory" explicitly in this quote ( WP:CHERRYPICKING, WP:STICKTOSOURCE):

"Traditional colour theory is defined as a branch of colour theory that features an ontological focus on pigment colour wherein colour is understood to have three attributes: hue, value (also referred to as tonal value, tone, lightness/darkness), and saturation (chroma, chromaticity).

This is claimed with no support, isn't used by anyone in art history or color science or by anyone other than the author as far as I can tell (WP:RS/AC). I would hope other editors would be suspicious as to why none of the key high quality sources used in this article in both art history and color science use "traditional color theory" (or "RYB system") in this way. O'Connor's paper is not cited by anyone else (WP:USEBYOTHERS). "Traditional color theory" is a label used by WP:RS found in this article to describe the class of incoherent low quality sources represented by "Color Mixing Guide" as discussed above. What WP:RS uses saturation and chroma equivocally in what "tradition"? Who confuses chroma with chromaticity? "Hue, value, and chroma" is synonymous with the Munsell Color System, (correctly) attributed to Albert Henry Munsell and considered foundational color theory/science. Munsell coined the term "chroma" and was well aware of the physicists' use of "saturation", how did the Munsell Color System end up as labeled as "traditional color theory" in this strange paper? It is undesirable for the article to represent these peculiar views (WP:FALSEBALANCE). The credibility of O'Connor's paper is further diminished by rather obvious fibs it makes, but this isn't a forum about that.

I didn't quote that one, as her other definition related more to primaries (RYB in particular). Your scholar search link ("isn't used by..." above) give a first hit to "Basic Color Theory" that says A color circle, based on red, yellow and blue, is traditional in the field of art." and "Primary Colors: Red, yellow and blue In traditional color theory...". This suggests to me that O'Connor and I are not the only ones using the adjective "traditional" for this RYB-based color theory. Anyway, I think O'Connor is a respected color writer and that this review is a reliable secondary source; it is not a requirement of Wikipedia that secondary sources give a cite for everything they say. Dicklyon (talk) 22:21, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Your claim that "RYB primaries" is her definition of "traditional color theory" isn't true. You can find her definition by reading the quote above that begins with ""Traditional colour theory is defined as...". Beats me as to how someone can turn that into RYB primaries.Maneesh (talk) 02:32, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Again, my "claim" is based on a different definition, the one in the source cited. Dicklyon (talk) 03:00, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

So if X is a "cornerstone component" of Y, X is defined as Y? Is that how this works? Maneesh (talk) 05:01, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Fixed. I had misinterpreted what was being defined there. Dicklyon (talk) 13:42, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that this is fixed, the writing is still makes these terms synonymous "This RYB system, or "traditional color theory","...but also cites a source titled "Traditional colour theory: A review" that explicitly defines "traditional color theory" in a way that is absolutely not synonymous with "RYB system". No need to make things this confusing. Handprint is absolutely concise and correct in the way it uses "material trichromacy" to define what I am pretty sure you are trying to. Compare how clearly the handprint page maps to the wp article, it's pretty obvious which is the much higher quality source. Maneesh (talk) 22:55, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Good point on the "or"; changed to "in". Never heard of "material trichromacy". Seems to be unique to handprint. Bruce notes there that the RYB system (with black and white) is "the conventional wisdom of artists and dyers stated in the formulaic brevity and specificity of an established theory." Fine. I call it "traditional color theory", as do various other sources. I know you like handprint, but it's also a very personal/opinionated source that's trying hard to get people to move away from traditional color theory. That's one POV. But that's not the POV that was so prominently missing from our article. And I agree that's it's no so easy to represent O'Connor's position concisely; with ‘Primary’ colours represent archetype variants of red, yellow and blue (RYB) – that is, not necessarily specific colours that are more pure or unique than others but rather exemplar colours and a focus on Hierarchical colour classifications I think it makes for a coherent interpretation of the traditional theory. But it's hard to summarize concisely. I could keep working on that. Or maybe there are other interpretations that could paint the traditional theory in a neutral or positive light to balance your dislike of it. Dicklyon (talk) 02:58, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

The reader is expected to believe that somehow the "RYB primaries" are a "cornerstone component" (from O'Connor's strange entry in Encyclopedia of Color Living Edition) of what is easily recognized as Munsell's seminal construction. Look at the Criticism subsection to see what Munsell had to say about that "RYB primaries" over a hundred years ago ("mischief", "a widely accepted error" etc.). It is quite laughable to suggest that "RYB primaries" are a cornerstone component of "hue, value, and chroma". I hope that the incoherence is clear here.

We really don't need to think about what the reader is expected to believe when we draw on secondary sources. And it sounds like you're complaining about RYB as cornerstone because you don't like her using Munsell's HVC dimensions. You're complaing about this source that's RYB focused because you dislike the other source that's more HVC focused? Why do you think I chose to quote this one? I do agree that the HVC definition is a bit off the mark for this article, whether it's a good or not good way of defining traditional color theory. Did Munsell get an exclusive on that? Did nobody organize color around those concepts (perhaps by other names) before Munsell? I don't know. Doesn't matter much to the crux of the point here. Dicklyon (talk) 22:21, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

If you don't have a good grasp of how much Munsell gets an exclusive on that, you need to read the key sources that are on this page (handprint and Briggs are a good place to start). You can also look at an accessible set of posts that critically assess the widely held notion that Munsell is the father of color science. Not at all credible to suggest that this doesn't matter here. If I were to define "traditional evolutionary theory" with observations and experiments from Darwin, Mendel etc. and then went on to say that "that a young earth is a core component of traditional evolutionary theory", that would be rather suspicious. That's what is going on here with O'Connor. You seem to be trying to cherrypick your way out of it, you can't.Maneesh (talk) 17:52, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Your math guy says of Munsell's patent: "Another part of the disclosure in the patent refers to 'the three well-known constants or qualities of color -- namely, hue, value or luminosity, and purity of chroma...' In the patent biz, we would refer to that hyphenated word well-known as a pretty clear admission of prior art!" So I'm not seeing what you mean that Munsell gets on exclusive on. Dicklyon (talk) 22:27, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

I provided that source so that editors can see a critical assessment of what is largely taken as common knowledge; the author of that post ultimately agree with Munsell father of color science after all the evidence is considered. From the link already provided "The concept of chroma, new to leading American physicists of Munsell’s time, was found to be an original idea of Munsell". I would guess that Munsell was referring to other imprecisely defined ideas as we see in Runge's sphere. People like Runge were dancing around the idea of chroma, but didn't come to Munsell's key insights for which he is often venerated for. Maneesh (talk) 22:55, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I have no problem with Munsell as father of color science (though there are other important fathers, like Young and Maxwell and Helmholtz and Abney among others). But color science was and is a different thing from traditional color theory. The RYB primaries don't make much sense in modern color science, but they are what they are in traditional color theory. It helps to ignore the sometimes-claimed properties that you can't mix them from other colors, or that you can mix all colors with them. But those confusions apply to all systems of primaries, not just to RYB. Dicklyon (talk) 02:36, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Briggs says "Colour order systems based on hue, lightness and relative chroma first appeared in the early 19th century, but the key concept of absolute chroma was devised by the American artist and art teacher, Albert Munsell (1858-1918)...". So, we can give Munsell an exclusive (at the time) on "absolute chroma". Does that invalidate what O'Connor wrote (which I didn't even put into the article, so not clear why you think it's so important)? Dicklyon (talk) 22:35, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

O'Connor is claiming (read her definitions) that RYB is a cornerstone component of Munsell's HVC (HVC is synonymous with Munsell). That's a clear fib there is no need to refer to a source that supports such silly claims. Maneesh (talk) 22:55, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

That's an odd accusation that it's a "clear fib". Why can't it just be that's she's referring to the HVC concepts that predate Munsell, even if he did help to clarify and make those more definite with the context of modern color science and his own color order system? Here is an 1892 example in which buff and yellow differ chiefly in chroma. Dicklyon (talk) 21:28, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

I added quote from handprint. I'm sure you won't like it, as it explains why artists often chose palettes closer to RYB than to the "optimal" CMY. Dicklyon (talk) 22:48, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't like it because the claims in the article are not supported by the source. MacEvoy is careful when he says "Painters who wanted to use a primary palette historically have chosen from among the labeled pigments", I strongly suspect he meant "would have chosen" as he doesn't mention a single painter or painting that used a primary palette historically (I can't think of one) in his entire website. Sticking to the source, some painters wanted to use a "primary palette" could only pick the pigments that were available that that time in history (fine). Does that claim support "MacEvoy explains why artists often chose a palette closer to RYB than to CMY"? It does not, there is no claim (and there couldn't really be) of what artists "often" chose. His R & B and aren't defined in his CIE LAB plane diagram (note his Y isn't b+, I am sure he has a good reason but hard for me to interpret)? If a painter who wanted to use a primary palette and chose PB17 and PR122, is that closer to RYB than CMY? How do you know? What metric are you using?Maneesh (talk) 22:55, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I also see that sentences now suggest that Itten and Albers are described together as making claims about RYB primaries. WP:RS treat Albers quite distinctly from Itten. Albers doesn't make any substantial claims about primary colors in his book , he really just mentions the different perspectives on primaries in passing (only 2 occurrences and in a very generalized way). Itten is really the only one who has something to do with "RYB primaries" and the one who WP:RS in the article critically asses. Some excellent notes on Albers from Briggs, along with an outstanding set of accessible sources. Albers has no real reason to be in this article.

I agree that I made a mistake in putting Albers in there; fixed. And I fixed the caption, which I agree was a bit off. This is still an early draft; help would be welcome. While some of your observations are correct—like that most authors don't specify specific pigments for R, Y, and B, and that there's not a great set that has a wide gamut (unless it's closer to CMY)—that is not a reason for us not to represent fairly and positively this widely used system of "primary colors". If you would turn your extensive knowledge to helping with that, that would be good. So far you've not been willing to do that for some reason. Your notion of a "coherent WP:RS" is one that doesn't talk about RYB as a system of primary colors; I get that. But WP:RS doesn't really restrict us to reliable sources that are "coherent" with your POV. We should rather be neutral, per WP:NPOV. Dicklyon (talk) 02:20, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

This article should reflect what I've outlined above and be reverted to where is was before Dicklyon's section was added. Things look very silly when "RYB primaries" is pushed past what coherent WP:RS claim. There has been plenty of time to seed the case for the nebulous idea of "traditional color theory" to be worked into the article but the associated claims do not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. "RYB primaries" generally represents an inconsistent and incoherent view of color outside of notable claims found in history (which are quite distinct from one another and are not grouped under one theory by WP:RS). The article does (and should) cite the variety of contemporary low quality sources in art education that do claim "RYB primaries". Even if you pick up, what appear to be, more casual contemporary art books they can't help but point out how "RYB primaries" makes no sense. No coherent WP:RS says anything other than that such claims are generally common, as well as false/inconsistent/under-specified/incoherent as seen in the material that Dicklyon has added.

Some of the other claims and sources about early printing seem to clearly belong (there really should be something for that in the article) in the Subtractive Mixing section unless they get too long at which point it would make sense to put a subsection in History. Maneesh (talk) 23:47, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

I have added a few more sources in which "traditional color theory" corresponds with RYB primaries. The fact that O'Connor mis-used "chromaticity", or used it differently from the way color scientists use it, doesn't mean there's no value in her review of traditional color theory in which RYB primaries are prominent. Your definition of all sources about that as being "low quality" is the bad POV problem I've been trying to work around here. Dicklyon (talk) 03:25, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't find a single occurrence "traditional color theory" in Snow and Froehlich. Who calls Snow and Froehlich "traditional color theory"? The quote in the article doesn't say anything but (from today's perspective) clumsily covers the difference between pigment and light. You are ignoring the problems I've clearly explained about 'Connor. Again: O'Connor's *explicit definition* of "traditional color theory" is, quite obviously, Munsell as I've shown clearly above which she associates with "RYB primaries"; that's nothing but silly as Munsell's quotes show. You can't work any of this into something coherent. If you think I am not helping by pointing out how this isn't sensible, so be it. I'll have to rely on the good sense of other editors. Maneesh (talk) 05:15, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Of course if they had used that term I probably would have said so in the article; I should probably not have quoted it that way above, since they use "Color Theory" without calling their RYB-based theory "traditional" at that time. The use of "traditional" is more retrospective; if you have a better sourced term for the color theory around RYB primaries, let us know. They do mention some competing color theories (named for their creators, including the Munsell theory), and discuss why they stick with a color theory and color wheel based on RYB. I agree it's clumsy from the modern color science POV. That's not a good reason to not fairly represent what it is. Maybe you don't like O'Connor's attempt at that; find something better then. Dicklyon (talk) 16:43, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

The article follows the claim: "O'Connor defines traditional color theory" with a quote that isn't how O'Connor defines traditional color theory. O'Connor isn't WP:RS but you aren't even putting her actual definition in which I've quoted earlier. Maneesh (talk) 06:53, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

I do realize she has a different definition in the review article from the encyclopedia article. I quoted the latter, as cited there, since it connects more to the topic of primary colors. Dicklyon (talk) 15:57, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

And now you've subsectioned mixing in limited palettes, that describes palettes that are not using "RYB primaries", under "Traditional red, yellow, and blue primary colors". This is all just hopelessly incoherent, I can't really do much except hope that other editors step in. Maneesh (talk) 17:09, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

That's my hope, too. That section is very odd if it's in this article but not connected to the notion of primaries, and more particulary to the primaries that most connect to painters' pigments. The sources there seem to be more often talking about red, yellow, and blue (and black and white) than about any of the other primary sets in the article. It looked to me like you had written to be an alternative to a more "traditional" treatment of RYB. Dicklyon (talk) 22:15, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Color matching in figures

The cover image from King's book is nice. Like a lot of color plates, I am not so sure about the actual hues in the book. The cover red, yellow and blue look different than the scan. The archive scan doesn't look like cyan, magenta, yellow. Maneesh (talk) 17:20, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

This is as complicated & philosophical as the topic  :-). The paper is not white in the archive image. So is it a faithful vs. darkened reproduction of an aged book? And is an aged book more faithful than making it look like it did when it was printed?  :-) North8000 (talk) 17:36, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

My thought is that any renaming of hues over what is in the text is speculative. You would need a reliable source that compared hues in a credible/critical way to rename them in the caption. Maneesh (talk) 17:50, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

I think an image from the archive scan would make more sense to use here. These seem to be different editions or something (the archive copy's cover doesn't have the funny looking offset in the title lettering either). It's quite confusing to see text describe a color as red when the color looks like a magenta (while not the case on the cover). Maneesh (talk) 02:52, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

I think my scan is more accurate than the one on archive. I have the original, and it's definitely very close to what you'd call CMY, or printers' process colors. Maneesh, I can loan you my copy if you'd like, since we're local to each other. The cover is indeed a bit weird; I don't know if it's printed on the colored background, or the background color is also printed. It looks like the paper is brown (since it's also brown on the back), and the inks are thick enough to mostly cover that. That brown is rendered too reddish in my scan, but the "red" and "blue" really do look pretty close to "magenta" and "cyan" (the plates, more so than the cover); not that we have to say that in the caption, just my impression. I suppose it's also possible that the 1923 and 1925 versions are different; different publisher, and distinctly different cover colorations. Dicklyon (talk) 04:43, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind offer but I trust you are seeing the colors correctly. I would still say it makes sense to use the archive scan since it doesn't show such an obvious visual conflict (on such core idea in this article), but as I said in the other thread, I won't do any serious editing here for awhile. I'll let other editors make their suggestions. Maneesh (talk) 06:59, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

I have no opinion. Since the use here is the the concept presented by the book author, possibly whatever reproduction is the closest to what the author of the book intended would be best. North8000 (talk) 11:34, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

The trouble with the archive scans, including from Google Books, is that they typically don't have a realistic gamma, which makes the colors dark and over-saturated. In terms of "what the author intended", it seems clear to me that he intended to use primaries that have a decent gamut, which means his blue is more like printer's "process blue" or "cyan blue" as it has been called, and his red similarly what printers call "process red", which is closer to magenta. The names and the colors don't quite line up the way we use them in modern color science, but they are what they are. Dicklyon (talk) 19:11, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

I found an old book that talks about "process blue" and variants. I've clipped a bit of a color image from p.295 showing one case of their process red and blue, and adjust the curve by dragging the "center" thingie in Photoshop Levels command to 2, to approximately correct for the fact that the Google Book Search puts linear intensity data, instead of gamma compressed, into the page images. This lightens the colors and shifts them toward cyan and magenta. Try it. Dicklyon (talk) 22:50, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Any of these inferences may be true, but I think it is much easier to explain by crappy color proofing. It's easy to believe this was a 'sell me' color book and no one was paying particular attention at press time. The book itself covers "red" and "magenta" pigments inside, I don't think the visual association with those pigments was different in 192X as compared to now. The claims on page 8 about mixing all colors aren't even interpretable or easily reconciled with the cover or color plate: "With the following colors at hand all known colors may be obtained. Lemon yellow, which is of greenish hue; yellow of orange hue; red with orange hue; red which has a bluish cast. Blue with a reddish tone, also blue with a leaning to- ward green. A liberal supply of white and some black which does not contain blue.". A fun artifact from the times, I presume not cited by anyone and I don't think it the claims about color should be taken too seriously. Maneesh (talk) 23:28, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

It seems sensible to me that they mention the use of 6 pigments (2 each of RYB, leaning different directions) to get "all known colors". It's a pretty large gamut at least. Not sure what your point is about "crappy color proofing". In my experience, printers are pretty careful about getting things right. The color of the archive scans can't be trusted though. Dicklyon (talk) 03:30, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

I never suggested that using 6 pigments is unreasonable to make a painting or that the gamut wouldn't be sufficiently for some purposes requiring diverse gamuts. The source is not coherent, red, yellow and blue (not white and black) are suggested to mix *all known colors* on the cover with the three circles, they are the primary colors on the color plate (does that mean they mix all known colors? who knows?). Then there are eight colors specified in the prose to mix "all known colors". The colors you can't mix with those colors are exactly the chromatic red, yellow, and blue single pigments. Then again, it's basically impossible to evaluate the claims because the specifications are imprecise (what is "blue with a reddish tone?"...alizarin? manganese violet?). Is this the "RYB system"? How can "yellow of greenish hue" and "blue with a leaning toward green" be a part of the "RYB system". Not the least bit suspicious about his prescription given the book isn't much more than a list of pigments? Just old silly color think meant to sell silly color books. Munsell was obviously familiar with this type of thing before this book was published. Color proofing mistakes aren't that common but this wouldn't surprise me at all (the offset on the cover title is certainly suspicious). We can speculate on what underlying differences that you see in your copy and the edition from a different year on archive but they aren't obvious and they don't appear to be consistent even within the edition (cover vs. color plate vs. prose). If your copy was printed in 1920 something, I'd bet very strongly that there must some shifts in color over the course of a century. Best to avoid such incoherent sources. Maneesh (talk) 05:18, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

And I never suggested that the source is particularly "coherent" in the sense that you mean. But it is a representation of some of the thinking in traditional color theory, and some of the practice for getting a decent gamut size. I get that you think traditional color theory is "just old silly color think"; that's one POV on the relation between traditional color theory and modern color science. But traditional color theory is still going strong 100 years later, because there's another POV about how useful the RYB circle arrangement is to artists and designers. Still unsure what you think is relevant about color differences in different editions and scans of this book though. Dicklyon (talk) 17:06, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

If a source doesn't make coherent claims and not notable what sense is there in putting in this article? Itten doesn't make much sense, but he is notable. It's not clear what the color plate in the book is saying, you've added "To achieve a larger gamut of colors via mixing, the red and blue pigments used in illustrative materials such as the Color Mixing Guide in the image are often closer to peacock blue (a blue-green or cyan) and carmine (color) (or crimson or magenta), respectively." How do you know what inks were used in that book? Are those the inks we are seeing in the color plate? Have they decayed over about a century? The color plate says red, yellow, and blue...that magenta circle sure doesn't look red to me and the book knows the difference between magenta and red pigments since it lists them separately. Unnecessary confusion. Your sectioning has also put the broad general claims about primary colors in pigments that span a thousand years *under* "Traditional red, yellow, and blue primary colors" which is used to describe 18th century ideas; this is isn't sensible. Maneesh (talk) 17:51, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Notability is not a concept that's applicable to sources. As for coherent claims, it seems coherent enough to me; just not from the POV of modern color science; but that's not where it's coming from. As for the colors of the inks, I listed several sources from back around them that discuss the colors of the process-red and process-blue inks typically used, and this book seems to fit that. Dicklyon (talk) 01:48, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, notability isn't the correct complaint, WP:UBO is. Not coherent to me because it makes a variety of claims that aren't consistent with eachother, the most clear one in the prose is precisely *not* "RYB", so it doesn't make sense to describe that in a section which you have titled "Traditional red, yellow, and blue primary colors". You do not know the identity of the inks without some sort of chemical analysis. Perhaps it was some sort of custom run, a number of inks were available at the time. The claim in the article that suggests the colors of the inks used is pure and unnecessary speculation. Maneesh (talk) 17:45, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Comparison of process colors in 1925 (top) and 1923 (bottom) editions of King's Color Mixing Guide

I got hold of the 1923 edition and scanned them together. The coverstock is a very different color, so let's ignore that. And they have different publishers, in different states. So the fact that there's a little bit of color variation makes sense. Still, both use a "process red" not far from magenta, and a "process blue" not far from cyan. For what that's worth. Dicklyon (talk) 04:31, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I have no idea what ink or inks the color plates use. I don't know how you could claim to know either without a mass spec and some other tools. The text says "red" and apparently the color plates are more purple and the cover doesn't match with those claims. The color plate makes claims about mixing a single chart with a small number of colors. The actual content of the book says something completely different with respect to mixing all known colors - the part that is actually relevant to this article. None of this is coherent, none of this is used by others it should not be used here. Maneesh (talk) 21:37, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Maybe if you two experts could state exactly what the content question/debate is, this 1/2 dummy (me) could chime in on it. :-) Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:10, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

I have no idea what the question is, or why Maneesh thinks I'm making claims about what inks were used when I say something about what color they are. He previously seemed to be saying that my observations on the 1925 edition were due to sloppy printing, and that the 1923 edition colors were probably closer to the modern interpretation of red and blue. This scans suggests to me that that's not the case. I'll loan him the books if he wants to use his own eyes, or his own colorimeter, or his own mass spectrometer, to find a way to say something other than what a lot of sources say about process red and process blue printing inks. Dicklyon (talk) 05:21, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

The claim in the article is "To achieve a larger gamut of colors via mixing, the red and blue pigments used in illustrative materials such as the Color Mixing Guide in the image are often closer to peacock blue (a blue-green or cyan) and carmine (color) (or crimson or magenta), respectively."....so the inks used to print the image on the page from "Color Mixing" were closer to peacock blue, carmine...whether you are describing the appearance of the primary inks or their chemical composition, how do you know the composition of the ink that you see? You can't unless someone tells you directly or you do a detailed chemical analysis. The appearance of a layer ink to your eye doesn't tell you what inks were mixed to make that layer, in general, there are many ways of making a given color of ink on a page from different primary inks. Furthermore, how does one know that this was "often" the case since in the same source we see what common sense would tell us about the practice in that era, that "many variations are encountered...practice of artists in changing the various colors makes standardization of process colors impossible". The inclusion of this book is even more confusing since it says that the primary colors are red, yellow and blue but the red definitely has some blue in it, which is different from what the cover clearly suggests...which is different than what the prose says (which uses white and black and colors that are exactly not red, yellow and blue). What is this source doing here and why is there so many unnecessary, and unsupported inferences?Maneesh (talk) 05:32, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Maneesh, on your "what is this source doing here" question, whether it's from a "be a useful article" standpoint, or a wiki guidelines, IMO there is a low bar for inclusion of a source. The wiki source standards are essentially sourcing and sourcing requirements for inclusion of material. Now with that sidebar aside, I think that most of your comments are basically saying that there is material in there that doesn't seem to have a basis. Which means that it also doesn't meet the higher bar of being sourced. If so there are many things that you could do. You could just try boldly editing it to remove whatever you think is wrong. You could just put tags on the items that you are concerned about. Or you could propose specific changes/deletions here in talk. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:11, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

No that isn't what I am saying. I am well aware that it makes sense to include some incoherent sources that say nothing more "RYB are the primary colors", you can see I've added a number of those sources myself to show how the claim is common. It's the additional, reachy unsupported inferences that are being made about how the color plates in "Color Mixing" that are the problem in this specific instance. There needs to be a consensus that the claim around "To achieve a larger gamut of colors via mixing, the red and blue pigments used in illustrative materials such as the Color Mixing Guide..." can't be true since no one here knows what pigments were used to make the color plates in that source. Maneesh (talk) 17:19, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

And that it doesn't make sense to show the pages of a source that says red yellow and blue are the primary colors when the image seems to be showing magenta/purple. That is very very confusing to readers, you don't need to show a picture from a source that isn't making sense about such a basic claim. Maneesh (talk) 17:22, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

The statement is about the pigment colors, not the pigment chemistry. I cited various sources about process red and process blue colors in support of the observation. I use this source because it has the best illustration I could find of how the process colors mix on paper. It makes a bridge between the paint mixing that it talks about and the color printing arts in which the RYB conceptual model had to actually work for mixing a wide gamut of colors, which evolved eventually to the CMYK model. Dicklyon (talk) 17:46, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

You don't know the appearance or the chemical identity of inks that was used to print that color plate. You don't know if those colors are single ink or a mix, what they look like or what they are. You just see a layer of color, that's all, that doesn't tell you what it is made of. We know that there were a variety of inks in use at the time, and there is no obvious way to find out what they were here without something like mass spectrometry; I doubt anyone would take up that study in this case. Plain and simple. Maneesh (talk) 22:24, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, we agree that I don't know the chemical identity of the inks used. Dicklyon (talk) 23:57, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Don't know how much more obvious I can make your speculation, what I said "You don't know the appearance or the chemical identity of inks that was used to print that color plate.", you reply with "we agree that I don't know the chemical identity of the inks used". You can only see appearance of their subtractive mixture. Maneesh (talk) 00:34, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Here's what the text currently says:

To achieve a larger gamut of colors via mixing, the red and blue pigments used in illustrative materials such as the Color Mixing Guide in the image are often closer to peacock blue (a blue-green or cyan) and carmine (color) (or crimson or magenta), respectively.

Printers traditionally used inks of such colors, known as "process blue" and "process red", before modern color science and the printing industry converged on the process colors (and names) cyan and magenta (this is not to say that RYB is the same as CMY, or that it is exactly subtractive, but that there is a range of ways to conceptualize traditional RYB as a subtractive system in the framework of modern color science).

References

Please let us know what part of this you find unsupported or whatever. Maybe I should have said "carmine lake" and "crimson lake", like the sources, instead of "carmine" and "crimson"? Is that a difference? Dicklyon (talk) 00:03, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I see, carmine lake and crimson lake in the sources are names for the pigment carmine, while I'm talking about the color of the ink being somewhere between red and magnenta, like the color of those pigments. Not a big jump, and pretty consistent with what the sources are saying. Where it says "process red may be considered carmine lake", I think it's using the pigment name to convey a pretty accurate description of the color, not saying that's the actual pigment used usually for process red. Dicklyon (talk) 00:21, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

For emphasis again: "You don't know the appearance or the chemical identity of inks that was used to print that color plate." You can only see appearance of their subtractive mixture. Maneesh (talk) 00:34, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Are you saying that maybe the red and yellow and blue circles were not printed with the red and yellow and blue process inks, but with mixtures? I suppose that's possible. Seems unlikely though. Dicklyon (talk) 03:27, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Your eyes do not have magic powers. You cannot tell by looking at spot of color on a page what inks were used to make that color. Maneesh (talk) 04:20, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

But maybe my eyes have a sufficiently advanced technology that you can't distinguish from magic? Anyway, if your speculation is right, then the printing inks would have a wider gamut than the mixtures of the shown red, yellow, and blue, right? Is that your point? What of it? Dicklyon (talk) 04:55, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

And by mixing do you mean printing by halftoning? Or do you mean they mixed their process inks from other inks? I should be able to look and see if there's any halftoning; I didn't see any, but I'll check in a few days when I get back home from my Independence Day holiday weekend. Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I've made my point clear to the point of pain at this point. You are speculating on the identity of inks that no reliable source tells you about (not even the text that the diagram is from which is little more than a list of colorants that includes such inks) or ever will. I'm not the one who is speculating here, it is you who are making claims about the appearance and/or identities of the inks used to print a colored page. The speculation should be removed from the article, the diagram should also be removed as it only serves to only confuse since the text says red but the hue shown is purple/magenta. I am also not interested in your WP:OR on what process was used to print that page. Maneesh (talk) 05:07, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

No, I have no interest in the identities of the inks; just their colors. I don't think I'm speculating when I say that books about color were printed with 3-color and 4-color printing processes, as described in the sources I cited. Dicklyon (talk) 05:23, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

You are absolutely speculating because the process, chemical identity and appearance of the inks used to print that page are no known to you or anyone at this point, nor are they written down in that book. No source will tell you what process was used to print the color plates in that book. You cannot tell me if those colors are single pigments or mixes or which pigments they are. The only way you could is via some sort of chemical analysis. Maneesh (talk) 20:52, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I have no interest in, and make no claims about, what pigments might have gone into the inks. Dicklyon (talk) 21:48, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Color/Colour

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I think that it doesn't matter which spelling we choose, as long as it's consistent within the article. However, according to the talk page this article is in American English, the title uses the American spelling and if you search for both spellings in the article, the American one is the most used. I see no reason to use the British spelling. If no one has any objections, I say we should just change the whole article to American English. Wikifan153 (talk) 09:04, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

I see you did this already, thanks. Curran919 (talk) 11:23, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.