The RGB primaries mixed together will ADD (gets brighter) to possibly combine into White if bright enough. We look directly at the transmitted light itself. The light from our monitor screen's RGB elements is seen directly by our eye. RGBВ color:В Red,В Green,В and Blue are the RGB primary colors of light. There is another system called CIELAB or Lab Color ( Wikipedia) that tries to define a specific color independent of how various devices might be able to reproduce it. Our home printers also use CMYK ink, but they are designed to expect to receive and convert RGB images (such as JPG files), since that's what we have to print.Д«oth RGB and CMYK are вЂњdevice dependentвЂќ color, meaning any final result somewhat depends on how the specific device is able to show it, like depending on just how red can the chosen ink or phosphorus actually make it? Different devices might show it a little different. Painting (art or houses, etc.) and printing (commercial prepress, etc.) and pigments and ink and dye and photo print paper use the CMYK system that we see as reflected from the colored surface. Raw files are not yet exactly RGB yet, but raw files are also not viewable images yet, not until the RGB conversion that we can view. This article is about RGB color, which is universally used in our digital cameras and scanners, almost all photo image files, computers, video monitors, cell phones, television and computer screens, stage lighting, and about anything else working with light (and our human eyes are a RGB system too). We see the light reflected from the surface after the pigment color has absorbed some colors of it. CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key, Wikipedia) is called the Subtractive system as reflected from pigments (for example, seen after reflection from a surface, such as from painting, printing or photo prints).

Our eye sees the direct transmitted light.

RGB (Red, Green, Blue, Wikipedia) is called the Additive system of light itself (for example, as transmitted from computer monitors and television sets).

Two of the basic color systems commonly relating to photographs are:

Light color 255 255 255