RYB color model
The RYB color model is a traditional subtractive scheme that treats red, yellow, and blue as primary colors, chiefly for painting and art education.
Subtractive color: Color formation in which pigments or filters absorb parts of incident light, leaving the remainder to reach the eye. RYB describes pigment mixing, where added colorants absorb more of the light spectrum.
Spectral reflectance: The proportion of incident light a surface reflects at each wavelength. A pigment's reflectance spectrum determines the light remaining when RYB paints are mixed.
CMY color model: A subtractive color model using cyan, magenta, and yellow as idealized primaries, commonly applied in printing. CMY primaries generally span a wider practical range of saturated mixtures than traditional RYB pigments.
Color theory: A body of ideas and methods for describing color relationships, mixing, harmony, and use. RYB is one historical teaching framework within the broader study of color relationships.
Primary color: A color designated as a basis for producing other colors within a particular color model. RYB assigns this role to red, yellow, and blue, though other models choose different primaries.
Kubelka–Munk theory: A model relating light absorption and scattering to the reflectance of diffusely scattering materials such as paint layers. It offers a physical account of paint mixing beyond the RYB wheel's simplified rules.
RGB color model: An additive color model that represents colors through combinations of red, green, and blue light. RGB concerns emitted light, whereas RYB is used to reason about pigment mixtures.
Color harmony: The use of color relationships to create arrangements perceived as coherent or purposeful. RYB wheels commonly guide complementary, analogous, and triadic palette choices.
Color wheel: A circular arrangement of hues that organizes relationships such as opposition, adjacency, and mixing. The traditional RYB wheel arranges its three primaries around secondary and intermediate hues.
Color mixing: The combination of lights, pigments, or other color stimuli to produce a resulting perceived color. RYB is one rule set for mixing pigments, distinct from mixing colored light.