
The primary colors in an RYB color wheel are red, yellow, and blue. HSV colors produced by mixing equal amounts of secondary and subsequent colors Tertiary hues The names for the twelve quaternary colors are more variable, if they exist at all, though indigo and scarlet are standard for blue–violet and red–vermilion. The terms for the RGB tertiary colors are not set. Tertiary-, quaternary-, and quinary- terms The tertiary color names used in the descriptions of RGB (or equivalently CMYK) systems are shown below. The secondary colors in an RGB color wheel are cyan, magenta, and yellow because these are the three subtractive colors-the primary colors of pigment. The primary colors in an RGB color wheel are red, green, and blue, because these are the three additive colors-the primary colors of light. Primary, secondary, and tertiary colors of the RGB (CMY) color wheel. In the terminology of color theory, RGB color space and CMY color space have a much larger color gamut than RYB color space. The RGB color wheel has largely replaced the traditional RYB color wheel because it is possible to display much brighter and more saturated colors using the primary and secondary colors of the RGB color wheel. The RYB color wheel was invented centuries before the 1890s, when it was found by experiment that magenta, yellow, and cyan are the primary colors of pigment, not red, yellow, and blue. This approach to tertiary color relates specifically to color in the form of paints, pigments, and dyes. These names are shown below.Īnother definition of tertiary color is provided by color theorists such as Moses Harris and Josef Albers, who suggest that tertiary colors are created by intermixing pairs of secondary colors: orange-green, green-purple, purple-orange or by intermixing complementary colors. Tertiary colors have general names, one set of names for the RGB color wheel and a different set for the RYB color wheel. Page from A New Practical Treatise on the Three Primitive Colours Assumed as a Perfect System of Rudimentary Information by Charles Hayter.Ī tertiary color or intermediate color is a color made by mixing one part of a primary color with half part of another primary (or one part of a primary color and one part of a secondary one), and none of any other primary color, in a given color space such as RGB, CMYK (more modern) or RYB (traditional).
