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Color Wheels Are Wrong
Artists say all colors are a mixture of red, yellow, and blue. But physics and TV screens and printers disagree. How does color really work?
Continuing this process produces the full color wheel you might have learned in school; a pretty, symmetrical, satisfying device in which each hue melds seamlessly and linearly into the next: First off, we’ve suddenly lost the notion of a “wheel.” As much as the previous color systems have contradicted each other, at least they all agreed that hues transform smoothly and continuously, one to the next, a beautiful symmetry with neither beginning nor end. Why is it necessarily a “wheel?” As you trace the (real, physical, see: rainbows) visible light spectrum, filter 1 starts full positive, then goes smoothly through zero and then negative, then back towards one.
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