Paint color mixing basics

Paint color mixing basics
Color varieties are endless, colorful, but there is a certain inner connection between the various colors, paint color is also. In addition to the paint has protection against corrosion and certain special features such as mildew, conductive, noise reduction, the main function is to decorate the home with colorful life. However, because each color has its own characteristics, it has a strong different impact on people’s visual, psychological, physiological and so on, the following let us get to know the basic knowledge of the paint color and how to adjust the color.

Basic concept of color
Mastering the basic concept of color is the foundation of paint color mixing. Each color can be determined by three parameters, i.e., the three attributes of color: hue, lightness and chroma.
1、Hue
Also known as color difference, hue, is the difference between color and color, hue is the most basic feature of color, which is determined by the spectral composition of light, due to the different wavelengths of color light gives a person a different color sensation, therefore, you can use the wavelength of the monochromatic light to indicate the color of the light. This property allows us to describe objects basically as red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.
Seven Primary Colors: Newton’s examples of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet were mistakenly thought to be the seven primary colors he proposed.
Six Primary Colors: Verner removed indigo from Newton’s seven colors and considered red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet as the six primary colors. Swiss color educator Eden (Johannes Itten 1888-1967) based on P. O. Runge’s color material three primary colors plus the secondary color between them, into red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple six primary colors.
Five primary colors: the ancient Greeks to white, yellow, red, blue, black for the five primary colors.
Tetrachromatic theory: red, yellow, green, blue four-color composition of red, green and yellow, blue two-color pairs, Herring put forward, the NCS color system using this theory.
Three primary colors: Jacob Christoph Le Blon (1667-1741) ＜Traité du Coloris＞ (1756) may be the earliest proposed three primary colors theory of the treatise.

The three primary colors red, green and violet
The chromatic triplet of red, green, and blue
The primary colors magenta, yellow, cyan and blue.
2、Brightness
Refers to the color of light and darkness, depth, usually with the reflectance of the brightness of the size. The same color will be due to the different light intensity and produce different brightness, with the same color also exists between the degree of brightness of the similarities and differences. The human eye has different visual sensitivities to different colors, and different colors will have different brightness feelings when the reflectance is the same.
3、Color
Also known as saturation, refers to the purity of the color, also known as the vividness of the color. Saturation depends on the proportion of color components in a certain color with the elimination of color components. The greater the color component, the greater the saturation; the greater the color component, the smaller the saturation.
Bright color: pure color plus white becomes light
Dark color: pure color plus black becomes dark, also known as shadow color
Turbid color: pure color plus gray into the middle color
Clear colors: bright and dark colors are clear colors.
If you put all the colors in one space, each color occupies a separate place!
Paint color mixing principle
The human eye can see the color is due to the presence of light, color are light on the surface of the object, the occurrence of different reflections, and then stimulate our eyes and produce. Different light produces different stimuli, thus getting different color sensations.
Natural objects can be divided into two categories: luminous and non-luminous:
Luminous body: itself can emit a spectrum of objects known as luminous body or called light source, the color of the luminous body is determined by its emission spectrum. (Additive mixing refers to the mixing of color light, more than two kinds of light mixed together, the brightness will increase, the total brightness of the mixed color is equal to the brightness of the mixed colors of light, so it is called additive mixing.)
Non-luminous body: non-luminous body is divided into two categories of transparent and opaque body. Non-luminous body only in the role of light to present color, color is the light on the object after the results of all the colors are inseparable from the light. For example, the color pigment refers to the visible light of different wavelengths of selective absorption, showing a variety of different colors of pigments or dyes and other substances. (Subtractive mixing refers mainly to the mixing of color pigments. In subtractive mixing, the more colors are mixed, the lower the lightness and the saturation will be reduced.)
Color sensation and hearing, smell, taste, etc. are sensations produced by external stimulation of the human sense organs. Light irradiation object by reflection or transmission after stimulation of the human eye, the human eye produces the brightness of the object and the color of the sensory information, and this information will be transmitted to the brain center, the brain will be processed in the sensory information, the formation of color perception.
External light stimulation – color perception – color sensation is a complex process, which involves optics, photochemistry, visual physiology, visual psychology and other aspects of the problem, from this process can be seen, the color and light and the human eye’s observation of the physiological and psychological basis of the close connection, the current through a large number of experiments have been established based on the establishment of a set of qualitative and quantitative description of the color of the theory known as chromaticity.

I. Light and color
1, visible light waves and color
Light is a certain frequency of electromagnetic radiation. The range of electromagnetic radiation from r-ray to radio waves, electromagnetic radiation in only a small section of the eye can cause excitement and be felt, which is usually referred to as the range of the visible spectrum, the visible spectrum of wavelengths from 380nm to 780nm, this section of the wavelength of the human eye can be seen, the different wavelengths give rise to a different color feeling.
The wavelength range in the table is only rough, in fact, from one color to another is a gradual change, and the color with the wavelength change is not uniform.
Sunlight is an intense light, and people feel that sunlight is white, but in fact when we let a beam of sunlight radiate through a prism onto a white screen, a band of light with a variety of colors (red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and violet) is shown.In 1666, the English scientist Isaac Newton did the first human experiment of separating a beam of sunlight with a prism, and thus proved that the white light of the sun is a combination of various colors of light. Usually into our eyes light is rarely pure monochromatic light, only in the laboratory, the use of monochromator to observe monochromatic light, in daily life, generally a variety of wavelengths of light together into our eyes, is a mixture of light, mixed light with a variety of wavelengths of light energy in different proportions and present different colors, short-wave light energy is greater when presenting blue-violet, long-wave light energy is greater when Red and so on.
Second, the basic properties of color
2.1 three basic properties of color
Describe a color must take into account the hue (H), saturation (C), brightness (L) three basic attributes of color.
Hue refers to the reflected light in the object to the wavelength of the dominant decision, different wavelengths have different color sensations, in order to study and use the convenience, usually linked into a ring (see Figure 2), this ring is called the hue ring or color wheel.
Color Wheel
Saturation is the sharpness of the color, saturation is also known as color purity or chromaticity. Take pigment as an example, add a pure color to white or black, the result makes the color correspondingly lower chroma, or tend to soft or heavy.
Brightness refers to the reflectance of non-color on the white and black series, and refers to the degree of lightness or darkness of a color, i.e., the difference between the shades of a color. The difference in brightness of color includes two meanings: one is the change in the shade of a particular color; the other is that there is a difference in brightness between different hues. Hue, saturation, and brightness are the three basic attributes of color, and non-color has only a difference in brightness.
Color is divided into two categories of non-color and color, non-color is black, white and between these two black and white in different proportions of the mixture produced by a series of gray, white and black series on the non-color reflectivity is called the brightness of the object, that is, the human eye on the object’s bright feeling, the higher the reflectivity, close to the white, the lower, close to the black. The series of colors from white – light gray – medium gray – dark gray – black constitute a category of color – non-color.
Color refers to a variety of colors in addition to the white and black series, the spectrum of different wavelengths in the visual performance is called hue, such as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, etc., and the degree of sharpness of a color is called the saturation of the color, if the color saturation is high, then the object is a dark color, such as crimson, dark green, etc., the saturation of a degree of expression of the chromaticity is also colorful, that is, the purity of the color, if the object reflects the light of the spectrum is narrow, the higher its saturation.
Color three-dimensional spindle (color space)
A three-dimensional spindle is used to represent all three basic attributes of color, hue, saturation, and lightness. The vertical axis represents the variations in brightness of the white-black series, with white at the top, various transitions of gray in the middle, black at the bottom, and the higher up you go, the greater the brightness, with a medium gray in the center. The points on the circumference represent the different shades on the spectrum, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. The transition from the circumference to the center of the circle indicates a gradual decrease in color saturation, i.e., the shorter the vertical distance from the center axis, the less saturated it is.
American artists Menzel is based on this theory to establish a set of table color system, he will be divided into ten levels of brightness, saturation is divided into twenty levels, the hue is divided into five primary colors, five secondary colors, each hue is divided into ten levels, the latest version of a total of more than 5000 pieces of color card. In addition, there are Sweden’s NCS natural color and Britain’s RAL some table color system, are the brightness, hue, saturation of different methods of division and the establishment of the color space.
Third, the mixing of colors
Additive color mixing
Hue is determined by wavelength, each wavelength produces a certain hue, but each hue is not associated with a specific wavelength. Because the human eye is not a very fine sense organs, spectral distribution of the same light can cause the same color feeling, and the distribution of different light under certain conditions can also cause the same color feeling of the human eye. Such as red light and green light mixed in a certain proportion to get yellow light. Spectrum of each color light, can find another in a certain proportion and it is mixed to get the white color light, this pair of color light is called the complementary color, such as red – cyan, yellow – blue, green – violet.
Color light mixing is an additive color mixing, the choice of red, green, blue for the three primary colors (the principle of choice is that any two mixed can not produce a third):
Red light + green light + blue light = white light
The energy of color light mixing is equal to the sum of the energy values of each color light, and the brightness is also increased.
The three laws of additive color mixing
Complementary color law: each color light has a mix with it, cancel each other or neutralized to produce white, such as red-cyan, blue-yellow, green-violet.
The law of intermediate colors: mixing every two non-complementary colors to produce a new mixture of color or the intermediate color between the two, its saturation is generally lower.
Law of substitution: i.e., the same color and different spectrum, color A = color B, color C = color D, A + C = B + D, which is the basis of modern chromaticity, the above laws are only suitable for the mixing of color light, for example, the color of color TV is a mixture of red, green, and blue color light emitted by the three electron gun is a kind of additive mixing of colors.
Subtractive color mixing
Paint, dye, color printing, color photography, etc. is a subtractive color mixing, it gets a different result from the additive mixing of color light, such as yellow light and blue light projected onto the screen in a certain proportion, you can get white, while mixing the yellow paint and blue paint to get green, never get white, this is due to the pigment absorbs a certain wavelength of light after the hue of the remaining light. This is due to the hue of light remaining after the pigment has absorbed certain wavelengths of light. For example, cyan pigment – absorbing red light from incident white light – reflects green and blue light to produce cyan, and yellow pigment – absorbing blue light from incident white light – reflects red and green light to produce yellow. Green paint, for example, consists of a transparent color spreading agent, lacquer, and yellow and blue pigment particles. When white light shines on it, the yellow pigment particles reflect only the yellow part of the light and the green light in its vicinity, and absorb (subtract) the rest of the light. The blue pigment particles reflect only the blue light and the nearby green light, and absorb the rest of the light. The final result of the double subtraction of white light by yellow and blue particles is green. So how do you get the most color out of color subtractive mixing? As mentioned above, since the color plus mixing with red, green and blue can be obtained in a variety of colors, then in the phase reduction mixing if you can control the red, green and blue colors can also be formulated in a variety of colors. In order to achieve this purpose, the application of the original color of the phase reduction mixing, they are red, green, blue complementary color (any color of light and its complementary color of light added to the white), that is, green, magenta and yellow. White light minus blue is yellow is used to control blue light. White light minus green is reddish purple, known as magenta, is to control the green. White light minus blue is yellow to control blue light. So magenta + yellow = red, yellow + green = green, green + magenta = blue, magenta + yellow + green = black. In this way, you can control the red, green, blue and get the same effect of adding and mixing. Therefore, it is correct to say that like paint, dyes, color printing and other color matching of the three primary colors is magenta, yellow, green, rather than the usual red, yellow, blue. But in the paint color matching practice because there is no magenta, green these two colors of pigments, so the color of the preparation can only be used red, yellow, blue to preparation, because of this reason, it increases the complexity of the paint color matching, making it difficult to sum up a set of artificial color modulation method of chapter and verse, but only according to the usual customary operation of the proposed several principles with the commonality of the.
Three principles of color matching:
As mentioned earlier, the two colors only its hue, color, brightness of the three are the same, the two colors are the same. Otherwise, one of the characteristics are different, the two colors are not the same. Because of this, we can change the color characteristics of one of the three parameters, you can get a new color.
(1) Different intermediate colors can be obtained by mixing red, yellow and blue in a certain proportion. Intermediate color and intermediate color mixing or intermediate color and red, yellow, blue one of the mixing and can be obtained complex color. Such as iron yellow and phthalocyanine blue green, toluidine red and iron yellow orange-red, iron yellow and phthalocyanine blue and iron red teal and so on. In short, these colors are obtained by changing the color tone to achieve.
(2) in the presentation of color on the basis of adding white to the original color dilution can be obtained with different degrees of color (i.e., usually referred to as different shades) of the compound color. For example, beige – milky yellow – tooth yellow – pearl white is on the basis of iron yellow according to the amount of titanium white into the amount of less to more, will be diluted to a different degree and get.
(3) in the color on the basis of adding unequal amounts of black, you can get the brightness of a variety of different colors. Such as iron red and black to get purple brown, white and black to get different gray, yellow and black to get black green and so on. The above three principles of color combination application, that is, on the basis of a color at the same time to change its tone and brightness, brightness and color, tone and color or change the tone, brightness and color at the same time, you will get a thousand different colors to. For example, if we use unequal amount of iron yellow and iron red to change its hue, and at the same time transfer unequal amount of white and black to change its color and brightness, we will get light camel, medium camel, deep camel, light camel gray and deep camel gray.
Color materials and application of products
1、Color material
Color is used for coloring the general term of the material, including color paste and color essence in wood coatings.