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submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by folaht@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

If you must choose, then out of Yellow, Magenta and Cyan...

  1. Which one looks the most like an in between of two primary^1^ colors?
  2. Which one looks the least like an in between of two primary^1^ colors?
  3. Which one looks the most like one of the primary colors?
  4. Which one looks the most white?
  5. Which one looks the most black?

I'm asking, because I want to know if people see colors the same way as I do.
If my "red" is your "green" I expect different answers.

^1^ Primary colors are Red, Green and Blue.

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[-] vala@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Yellow, Magenta and Cyan are not really "in between" 2 primary colors. More like a sum of 2 primary colors.

We can explore this with the RGB color space model.

R G B
1 0 0 - red
0 1 0 - green
0 0 1 - blue 
1 1 0 - yellow
0 1 1 - cyan
1 0 1 - magenta
1 1 1 - white
0 0 0 - black

So you can see for instance that yellow is actually 2x as "bright" as red. In this model, white is 3x as bright as red.

[-] SteposVenzny@beehaw.org 4 points 5 days ago

I am colorblind, so no.

Magenta

Cyan

Yellow

Cyan

Red and blue are tied in this image but in darker shades the answer is always red.

[-] GrantUsEyes@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Not the answer you are looking for, just here to add that CMY are also primary colors. Is just a different palette, that is more suitable for print (with the addition of black [K]) than for painting . Both palettes (cmy and the taditional red,blue,yellow) work the same way (substractive color), in contrast to the rgb palette that is on your example (additive color).

Note that green is a secondary color in the traditional and cmy palettes , resulting from the mix of blue and yellow or cyan and yellow.

Cmy

Red, blue, yellow

[-] dsilverz@calckey.world 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

@folaht@lemmy.ml !asklemmy@lemmy.ml

With some caveats, to me, the answers are:

  1. Definitely Magenta
  2. I'd say Cyan, even though it still "feels" to me like "the in-between" of Green and Blue
  3. Magenta again, which highly looks like red
  4. It's a draw between Cyan and Yellow, both seem bright enough to be the closest to white
  5. Definitely Magenta again, it feels pretty dark to me (and dark, to me, has a good connotation as I'll explain below).

The caveats are:
- Both laptop and external monitor have IPS panels. If I were to use OLED, quantum-dot displays, Plasma or even the old CRT displays, it'd probably yield different perceptions. I don't own any of these display types to test this, though.
- The specific shape of Venn diagrams also influences on how colors are perceived: a circle have a smaller area (pi×r×r) than a square (s²) or an equilateral rhombus (also s²). Note: I'm considering s = 2r a.k.a. the side of a square equal to the diameter of a circle. The area, in turn, influences how vision perceives contrast.
- Magenta has no real wavelength so it's produced solely by the brain when both L and S cones are simultaneously stimulated at the highest intensities by artificial lights (LED).
- I'm currently in a room lit both by daylight and by "cold white" LED lamp. The sky is clear and there's plenty of vegetation in my vicinity tinting the daylight.
- I access Lemmy using dark mode, and the background is the main aspect influencing contrast (the relationship between colors) and, by extension, perception. Dark background leads to "brighter" colors.
- I use high prescription glasses, and my lenses are slightly yellowed. This possibly influence my perception of colors.
- I have a personal bias towards red and purple due to my specific views on spirituality. Specifically, the way Lilith pulled me in the recent years made me perceive red in a more vivid manner and be attracted to it, while my syntony with Lucifer makes me feel something "divine" with purple (while also sharing some energy with the Lilithian red). Turns out that purple isn't so perceptually different from magenta, and our RGB displays produce both colors artificially with the similar Red-Blue dance (with magenta specifically having less of blue, therefore being less of a Luciferian color and more of a Lilithian color).
- I'm a former developer and someone who's worked extensively from UX/UI to graphic design. I built several full-stack webpages, Delphi 7 and VB6 native applications, as well as brands, logos and leaflets. This made me highly familiar with RGB palettes, and this may be another personal bias in my perception.

So, indeed, color perception is highly subjective although living beings share some commonalities when interpreting colors (e.g. red as "danger"; it's the Carl Jung's "collective unconscious").

[-] Mothra@mander.xyz 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

1, 2, 4, 5: None

3: Yellow, if by the primaries you refer to Yellow Red Blue.

Also in your image I don't see cyan pictured. You have yellow, magenta, and blue. My answers are for true Y, M,C hues.

[-] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

I agree, but I think it also depends on the kind of monitor you have. For the blue, it's almost cyan, but a little too dark.

[-] folaht@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 days ago

I'm hoping to found people that might say this of yellow or magenta.

[-] folaht@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I changed the picture because I don't think my previous one correctly represented the colors.

The fact that you say cyan was missing and instead you saw blue is I think interesting,
and wonder if people would agree wit you.

[-] onslaught545@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 days ago

I don't, but I have cone-rod dystrophy.

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)
  1. Yellow
  2. Cyan
  3. Cyan
  4. Yellow
  5. Magenta, by a hair over cyan

In my mind, I'm lumping in cyan as a shade of blue and magenta as a shade between purple and red. Yellow for 4 since I could imagine magenta and cyan text being legible whiteboard marker colors, but not yellow.

Edit: ran through again on an OLED display after a crappy TN panel on the first run. Same answers but with a larger margin for 5.

[-] tacostrange@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago
  1. Magenta
  2. Yellow
  3. Cyan
  4. Yellow
  5. Magenta
[-] Nemo@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 days ago
  1. none
  2. yellow
  3. tie between magenta and cyan
  4. cyan
  5. none
[-] Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago

Magenta
Yellow
Cyan
Cyan
Magenta

[-] OldChicoAle@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

No I'm colorblind.

[-] HubertManne@piefed.social 1 points 5 days ago

I guess for 1 its yellow as it feels the most like its own color. I feel like magenta feels like a shade of red and cyan as a shade of blue. I guess I feel 2 and 3 should be the same answer as I chose the most unique inbetween as the most like an inbetween but it is real close. I guess I will choose cyan as the magenta is closer to purple which I kinda feel is its own color but I don't feel strongly about it. I guess I would say (4) is yellow as it seems the lightest and (5) would be blue as it seems the darkest.

this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
18 points (95.0% liked)

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