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== History ==
ColorColour theory is rooted in antiquity, with early musings on colorcolour in [[Aristotle]]'s (d. 322 BCE) ''[[On ColorsColours]]'' and [[Ptolemy]]'s (d. 168 CE) ''[[Optics (Ptolemy)|Optics]]''. The [[Natya_Shastra|''Nāṭya Shāstra'']] (d. 200 BCE) composed in [[Ancient India]], had an early, functional theory of colorcolour,<ref name="Natyashastra">{{cite web |url=https://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/the-natyashastra/d/doc210153.html |title=Chapter XXIII 'Costumes and Make-up' |last=Shastri |first=Babulal |publisher=Motilal Banarasidass |date=April 16, 2025 |website=Wisdomlib |access-date=April 16, 2025}}</ref> considering four colours as primary, [[black]], [[blue]], [[yellow]] and [[red]]. It also describes the production of derived colorscolours from [[Primary_color|primary colorscolours]].
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The influence of light on colorcolour was investigated and revealed further by [[al-Kindi]] (d. 873) and [[Ibn al-Haytham]] (d. 1039). [[Ibn Sina]] (d. 1037), [[Nasir al-Din al-Tusi]] (d. 1274), and [[Robert Grosseteste]] (d. 1253) discovered that contrary to the teachings of Aristotle, there are multiple colorcolour paths to get from black to white.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Smithson |first1=H.E. |last2=Dinkova-Bruun |first2=G. |last3=Gasper |first3=G.E.M. |last4=Huxtable |first4=M. |last5=McLeish |first5=T.C.B. |last6=Panti |first6=C.P. |title=A three-dimensional color space from the 13th century |journal=J. Opt. Soc. Am. A |date=2012 |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=A346–A352 |doi=10.1364/josaa.29.00A346|pmid=22330399 |pmc=3287286 |bibcode=2012JOSAA..29A.346S }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kirchner |first1=E. |title=ColorColour theory and colorcolour order in medieval Islam: A review |journal=ColorColour Research & Application |date=2013 |volume=40 |issue=1 |pages=5–16 |doi=10.1002/col.21861}}</ref> More modern approaches to colorcolour theory principles can be found in the writings of [[Leone Battista Alberti]] (c. 1435) and the notebooks of [[Leonardo da Vinci]] (c. 1490).[[File:Color diagram Charles Hayter.jpg|thumb|Page from 1826 ''A New Practical Treatise on the Three Primitive Colours Assumed as a Perfect System of Rudimentary Information'' by [[Charles Hayter]]]]
[[Isaac Newton]] (d. 1727) worked extensively on colorcolour theory, helping and developing his own theory from stating the fact that white light is composed of a spectrum of colorscolours, and that colorcolour is not intrinsic to objects, but rather arises from the way an object reflects or absorbs different wavelengths. His 1672 paper on the nature of white light and colours forms the basis for all work that followed on colour and colour vision.<ref>{{Citation |last=Marriott |first=F.H.C. |date=2014 |orig-year=1962 (print) |title=Colour Vision: Introduction |url=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/B9781483230894500212 |work=The Visual Process |publisher=Elsevier |pages=219–229 |doi=10.1016/b978-1-4832-3089-4.50021-2 |isbn=978-1-4832-3089-4 |access-date=2025-03-02 |language=en|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
The RYB primary colorscolours became the foundation of 18th-century theories of [[color vision]],{{Citation needed|date=September 2018}} as the fundamental sensory qualities that are blended in the perception of all physical colorscolours, and conversely, in the physical mixture of [[pigment]]s or [[dye]]s. These theories were enhanced by 18th-century investigations of a variety of purely psychological colorcolour effects, in particular the contrast between "complementary" or opposing hues that are produced by colorcolour afterimages and in the contrasting shadows in coloredcoloured light. These ideas and many personal colorcolour observations were summarizedsummarised in two founding documents in colorcolour theory: the ''[[Theory of Colours]]'' (1810) by the German poet [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], and ''The Law of Simultaneous Color Contrast'' (1839) by the French industrial chemist [[Michel Eugène Chevreul]]. [[Charles Hayter]] published ''A New Practical Treatise on the Three Primitive Colours Assumed as a Perfect System of Rudimentary Information'' (London 1826), in which he described how all colorscolours could be obtained from just three.
Subsequently, German and English scientists established in the late 19th century that colorcolour perception is best described in terms of a different set of primary colors—redcolours—red, green and blue-violet ([[RGB colorcolour model|RGB]])—modeled through the additive mixture of three monochromatic lights. Subsequent research anchored these primary colorscolours in the differing responses to light by three types of [[Cone cell|colorcolour receptors]] or ''cones'' in the [[retina]] ([[trichromacy]]). On this basis the quantitative description of the colorcolour mixture or colorimetrycolourimetry developed in the early 20th century, along with a series of increasingly sophisticated models of [[colorcolour space]] and colorcolour perception, such as the [[opponent process]] theory.
[[File:Munsell-system.svg|thumb|left|[[Munsell colorcolour system|Munsell]]'s 1905 colorcolour system represents colorscolours using three colorcolour-making attributes, ''value'' (lightness), ''chroma'' (saturation), and ''hue''.]]
Across the same period, industrial chemistry radically expanded the colorcolour range of lightfast synthetic pigments, allowing for substantially improved saturation in colorcolour mixtures of dyes, paints, and inks. It also created the dyes and chemical processes necessary for colorcolour photography. As a result, three-colorcolour printing became aesthetically and economically feasible in mass printed media, and the artists' colorcolour theory was adapted to primary colorscolours most effective in inks or photographic dyes: cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY). (In printing, dark colorscolours are supplemented by black ink, called "key," to make the [[CMYK]] system; in both printing and photography, white is provided by the colorcolour of the paper.) These CMY primary colorscolours were reconciled with the RGB primaries, and subtractive colorcolour mixing with additive colorcolour mixing, by defining the CMY primaries as substances that ''absorbed'' only one of the retinal primary colorscolours: cyan absorbs only red (−R+G+B), magenta only green (+R−G+B), and yellow only blue-violet (+R+G−B). It is important to add that the CMYK, or process, colorcolour printing is meant as an economical way of producing a wide range of colorscolours for printing, but is deficient in reproducing certain colorscolours, notably orange and slightly deficient in reproducing purples. A wider range of colorscolours can be obtained with the addition of other colorscolours to the printing process, such as in [[Pantone]]'s [[Hexachrome]] printing ink system (six colorscolours), among others.
For much of the 19th century artistic colorcolour theory either lagged behind scientific understanding or was augmented by science books written for the lay public, in particular ''Modern Chromatics'' (1879) by the American physicist [[Ogden Rood]], and early colorcolour atlases developed by [[Albert Munsell]] (''Munsell Book of Color'', 1915, see [[Munsell colorcolour system]]) and [[Wilhelm Ostwald]] (Color Atlas, 1919). Major advances were made in the early 20th century by artists teaching or associated with the German [[Bauhaus]], in particular [[Wassily Kandinsky]], [[Johannes Itten]], [[Faber Birren]] and [[Josef Albers]], whose writings mix speculation with an empirical or demonstration-based study of colorcolour design principles.
== Color mixing ==
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