Now that you know the secret, we’ll have to kill you George. Be careful answering your door… 🙂
Dave
there it is! My knuckles are turning…purple!
George
Purple, as in rage?
I know lots of ways to do that in PS!
….just because there is no distinct wavelength on the EMS for magenta does not mean the color does not exist, if you went by that logic you’d have to conclude that white light does not exist.
What would a spectrometer register when presented with magenta?
a dearth of green wavelengths?
At least purple has a distinct wavelength, it’s somewhere between Indigo and Violet, no? Or IS it Violet?
Well, since purple or at least a good representation of it can be obtained by only magenta and black, it has no distinct wavelength. Actually, hetrodyning two frequencies does produce two others, one the sum of the two and the other the difference. Old radio theory.
White light is simply noise. So, it has all frequencies. But again, like any color, there is nothing in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that singles out the bare octave of frequencies that we perceive as light as anything different from other parts of the spectrum. Why can’t we "see" radio waves? That’s the mystery.
I’ll just have to Google "Light"
Google knows! 😉
The suggested "purples" are at HSB hues of 318 degrees (Larry) and 282 degrees (John)on my machine. Interesting that one is 18 degrees beyond magenta (300 deg) and the other 18 degrees short. Both (as well as the range between them) are fairly good subjective substitutes for purple. Of course, magenta is not literally at 300 degrees and any exact numerical assignment would be challenged and would vary depending on one’s specific color settings.
Too bad we can’t, for comparison, generate a spectral line on the monitor at the wavelength of purple as produced by a prism refracting white light.
I still don’t know how to handle the color wheel’s transition where the ends of the spectrum join at 359/0 degrees. Some sort of gradation between blue at 240 and red at 0 is made to avoid a discontinuity at the juncture or somewhere in between.
George
Larry,
"…Well, since purple or at least a good representation of it can be obtained by only magenta and black…"
I don’t find black to be a necessary ingredient in producing a purple facsimile.
"…Actually, heterodyning two frequencies does produce two others, one the sum of the two and the other the difference. Old radio theory…"
The sum and difference components were derived from Fourier analysis which long predates radio and was, in fact, the basis for radio theory. But it doesn’t help resolve this dilemma, because there are no two frequencies in the visible spectrum which, when added or subtracted get you anywhere near the purple portion of the prismatic spectrum.
George
The very term "purple" is an imprecise definition of color.
Or is it?
Does the name imply a quantifiable device independent color?
I know that, George. I was simply ruminating over the dilemma.
I don’t think it’s purple, but rather violet. Now, is violet purple?
Why I used black was to see what happens to 100% magenta when mixing in black. I got close to purple, and adding the cyan shift got me to what I would label purple. If you consider the primaries that are taught in painting classes in art school, you come up with a red that isn’t primary for cmyk, and they call it primary. My SO is a colorist, and we constantly have disagreements over color names.
Color is only quantifiable because we can link certain names for a physiological response to certain wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. Red is not exact; we rather speak of redness. What is yellow? Is it lemon yellow or mustard yellow? We derive these names from objects in nature that can be relied on to be consistent enough to function as a standard.
We agree that our illusions and delusions match.
We call that collusion! 😉
Works pretty well. 🙂
According to Binny & Smith (Crayola), "purple" is the same as violet.
According to most British folks, "purple" is the same as magenta.
Yes, it is a very imprecise color name.
The color wheel gradation from 240 to 360 degrees is from blue with no red to red with no blue, the proportions of each being a linear function of angle. Thus, at 300 degrees (magenta I’d say), blue and red values are equal. What seems like purple lies in that vicinity. In judging what looks like purple, my eye is biased toward the blue side of 300 and I like John’s 60C/100M which registers at 285 degrees. I have to presume that the eye-brain sensation with that mix is comparable to it’s reaction at 4300-4600 angstrom’s (thank you, Len).
George
Another peculiarity about sight is that it is the only sense that requires the object to be viewed to be bathed in noise. Sound on the otherhand, is generated directly by the source. Touch, smell and taste likewise.
Of course, certain phenomenon like lightning is the source and the object, but I’m sure you get my drift.
Imagine that in order to hear music you first have to have a white noise generator flooding the stage. Noise you cannot hear until it bounces off some object that is radiating the sound of a piano.
It’s all too weird for me! Better go back to trying to make photoshop run better! 😉
I enjoyed the "purple" discussion. Purple is one of my favorite colors. Coincidentally, I came across this information a couple of days ago and thought I would share it.
It’s an excerpt from the book titled "Principles of Color Design" (designing with electronic color by Wucius Wong)
"The purple family ranges from a bluish purple (75/99/00/00) to a purplish magenta (25/99/00/00), with colors formed with a high content of magenta and varying proportions of cyan. They generally represent the darkest colors in the visual spectrum. Chroma of the colors is reduced with the presence of yellow in the mixture.
Purple has been an expensive pigment for a long time. Thus it stands for royalty and nobility. Leaning towards magenta, it shows a feeling of feminine elegance, with romantic overtones, particularly when lightened in value."
A lot of that goes over my head, but I do like the color purple. 🙂
Patty
