today as our kelly-sub, chris chapin came in to speak to us some more about color theory. he helped us put together once for all the relationship between CMY and RGB (if RGB are your primaries, their intersections create the secondary CMY) which was amazingly illuminating. in this teaching, it was revealed to us how, exactly, four-color-process printing works in terms of how it reflects light and generates the colors we see.
i'm so excited about this, it made so much crazy scientific sense. a recap: when you lay down a CMY color of ink, you are neutralizing its complement in the RGB light spectrum. after removing the complement of a color, the remaining primaries necessarily combine to make the color of ink you first set down, which is what reflects back off the paper, and is the color that you see! so cyan ink doesn't appear cyan just because it's cyan ink, it's that color because it captures and neutralizes the red light waves, leaving only blue and green reflecting back out, which, when combined, make cyan!
guys, that is so cool.
we also discussed pantone's system as a good way to get print colors you might not otherwise be able to generate through cmyk alone. pantone has a thus far benevolent monopoly on consistent color recipes, and their pms numbers are used to describe print colors all over the world. suddenly hit with a curiosity, i asked chris what they mixed in order to get their colors. he half-answered, leaving me more confused, until i saw the pantone mixing swatchbook. they make their colors out of their own colors, which are presumably also made from their own colors. so recursive! so confusing! so diabolical! you cannot duplicate a pantone color without the exact specifications, and you cannot use those specifications if you don't already have their stuff.
pantone is so clever. they've really got it made. maybe they need an intern or something.
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