The additive color mode is primarily used when shades of light are used to create colors, while the subtractive mode is used when white light, such as sunlight, reflects off an object.

For his experimental work on the subject, James Clerk Maxwell is sometimes credited as being the father of additive color. He had the photographer Thomas Sutton photograph a tartan ribbon on black-and-white film three times, first with a red, then green, then blue color filter over the lens.

This theory states that all perceivable colors can be made by mixing different amounts of red, green, and blue light, the primary colors of the additive color system. Equal amounts of the three primaries give the sensation of white, while the absence of additive primaries is black.

Additive color refers to how we see color in light itself. If you mix blue with green light, you get cyan light. If you mix blue with red light, you get magenta light. When you mix (add) all the colors of light together, you get white light. This is why it is referred to as additive color.

The additive primary colors are red, green and blue. Colors in the additive color system are produced from the combination of different intensities of red, green, and blue light. A complete absence of all additive primary colors appears black, while equal intensities form white….

The additive primary colours are red, green and blue (often shortened as RGB). When added together in equal amounts at 100% intensity, white light is created. When added together in different proportions, all other colours can be created.

If the three colors of light can be mixed to produce white, they are called primary colors and the standard additive primary colors are red, green and blue. Two colors that produce white when added together are called complementary. The color complementary to a primary color is called a secondary color.

A simulated example of additive color mixing. Additive primaries act as sources of light. The primaries red, green, and blue combine pairwise to produce the additive secondaries cyan, magenta, and yellow. Combining all three primaries (center) produces white.

If you mix all colors from light, you get white. If you mix all colors from pigments (paint) you get black. This is because different pigments absorb specific colours of light and if you add all the pigments there is no light reflected back to the eye from that surface. Black being the absence of light.

Technically, pure white is the absence of color. In other words, you can’t mix colors to create white. Therefore, white is the absence of color in the strictest sense of the definition.

Each colour has a different wavelength. Red has the longest wavelength, and violet has the shortest wavelength. When all the waves are seen together, they make white light. White light is actually made of all of the colours of the rainbow because it contains all wavelengths, and it is described as polychromatic light….

White light is defined as the complete mixture of all of the wavelengths of the visible spectrum. This means that if I have beams of light of all of the colors of the rainbow and focus all of the colors onto a single spot, the combination of all of the colors will result in a beam of white light….

violet

Waves with a short wavelength have the most energy. Red waves have a relatively long wavelength (in the 700 nm range), and violet waves are much shorter – roughly half that. Because violet waves have the shortest wavelength of the visible light spectrum, they carry the most energy….

Gamma rays