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Aliciane — Thoughts about Digital Color Mixing
Published: 2013-02-23 21:34:17 +0000 UTC; Views: 5996; Favourites: 153; Downloads: 161
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Thoughts about Digital Color MixingMedium : Digital Painting
Quite a random tuto, filled with many thoughts as stated in the title. Someone raised a question in the Forum, about the mixing in Photoshop/Gimp compared to the mixing in SAI. It made me think about many things I had never thought of until now. Like is the digital mixing an additive mixing or a subtractive mixing ? Can you easily predict the result of a given mix ? What primaries should you use to mix your digital colours ? Seriously, artists, don't do scientific studies. Your brain will end as damaged as mine and you'll start to analyse and make silly theories and calculations about nearly everything ! So basically, that was part of my personnal color theory. I've thought about so much things I didn't know how to include, I'm not even sure the way I've organized it is understandable by someone other than me
There's also a French translation : Thoughts about Digital Color Mixing (French ver.)
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Comments: 40
In actuality, those mixes are not (the correct) arithmetic means due to the simple fact we save RGB values in a logarithmic scale, not linear. See this to learn what this means in practice.
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That's super interesting ! I've just checked on my software (Krita) and I definitely observe this darker color appearing when I blend/blur two highly saturated colors with the default settings. But the video also made me discover that I could use another color space, and I found some in which the blending was done the "correct way". So, I definitely have to experiment with that in my next painting !
Thanks a lot for the link, I've featured your comment hoping that more people will see it !
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Glad to hear you liked it!
Yes, changing the color space would be one solution. But even within RGB, there might be an option, which allows blending/blurring tools take squared values into account. That way it'd be easier to tell when you're picking a color, that is outside of your monitor's (or at least the software's) colorspace. Unless that's what you meant by 'color space'.
Funny, I used the "Hold it!"-thing partly to gain attention. But perhaps it could do without now, being featured and all.
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What if you used a section that cuts straight through the middle, perpendicular to the greyscale axis?
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You would obtain a regular hexagonal section, whose summits are the 6 secondary colours
It would look like that (please forgive the quality of the image, I made it very quickly ^^)
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The truth is that I noticed these difference between SAI and PS but I didn't know what were exactly. In fact, it's the main reason why I sketch more in the first one.
Thanks for this tutorial ^^ I found it really interesting
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This is quite a big difference so I can see why people would prefer one or the other
Thank you for your comment !
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Oh no no no, I'm just a crazy scientist
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Fascinating work! Thank you for putting all this together. It's really clear, and useful. I knew it was averaging colours but I'd never really thought about the consequences. (Nothing wrong with thinking scientifically about art! Understanding your tools can really help your creativity, actually.)
You got me thinking, so I decided to look into how the actual RGB and HSB numbers are behaving when we mix colours. I've posted my results here: [link]
(One interesting result: You don't always want to use the most saturated version of the mix colour. If your original colours aren't 100% saturated, your mix shouldn't be either (in general!).)
I'd love to hear what you think!
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Hey, you've pointed out very interesting facts about the HSB notation !
I never thought that (128, 0, 128) and (0, 0, 128) had the same brightness, might explain why I've never been able to understand how to compute those numbers. I thought the brightness was something like (R+G+B)/3
Therefore you suggest to mix colours by keeping an eye on the hue & saturation values ? Indeed, since those values are easily available in most digital art program, yeah it's easier just to increase them manually than by painting over with a blending mode or a more saturated colour 
I also tried to play with blending modes, I thought too that "add" would be similar to an additive mixing... But it only really works with the primary colours, like you noticed too. I like "overlay" though, even if I don't understand very much what it does, it almost always raises the saturation whatever colour you choose.
(Very sorry for the lateness, I'm not very active on DA, not really an excuse though 
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Je l'ai fait en anglais pour que ça parle à la majorité de l'audience de DA, mais si tu veux je peux refaire une version française, je dois déjà corriger les fautes dans celle-ci, alors je peux traduire au passage ^^
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Super tu es un amour,on a toujours besoin d'aide nous les francophones.
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Voilà, avec pas mal de retard si ça t'intéresse toujours
Traduction française
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and THIS is the reason I'm saving up cash for SAI.
I'm done with the whole 'wonky photoshop blending' thing...
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Well, the question is : do you want to trust the software to create the colours for you or do you want to know its behaviour and be able to create the blend you exactly want ? 
The advantage of the Gimp/Photoshop's blending engine is that it's totally predictable, while SAI and Painter may give more "random" results.
Therefore I totally understand why some people may prefer SAI's engine, because traditional painting also act quite random while blending because of the chemistry of the pigments, and it's part of its charm.
I think a good handle of SAI's engine may give really nice results with pretty strong colours ! Given the price of SAI, you will not take a huge risk in buying is so I wish you the best with this software ! ^^
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This. Is the most eye-opening thing I have read in a long time. 0_0 see my eyes are way opened. Heh.
So when you say "pick the associated pure hue" do you mean to pick the color, but with no black or white added?
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Sort of, I try to mean that if your intermediate color is an orange, it looks well if you select the pure orange, like the most saturated one (located in the triangle's summit in my figure), to paint over your mid tone.
Err, I'm not sure I'm clearer at all
I think you mean well by saying with no black and white, but wasn't sure
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Yeah by no black or white, I meant most saturated. I need to practice my technical art terms.
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i´m back
just wanted to tell you i´ve linked your tutorial here
[link]
cheers!
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I've checked this out, you're making a lot of very good studies, I'm sure this will pay off very soon ! Keep the good job !
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Ah c'est parfait ! Merci pour ce tuto sur le color blending c'est exactement ce qu'il me fallait
Tu viens de gagner un watcher et un favoris
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Mince alors, y a des gens qui comprennent mes élucubrations, malgré mon anglais approximatif et mes fautes d'orthographe (qu'il faut vraiment que je corrige
Ben écoute, bien contente que ça soit utile aux gens, si t'as des questions plus précises ou que tu voudrais carrément un tuto sur quelque chose d'autre, je serai ravie de partager mon maigre savoir
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T'inquiète pour l'anglais approximatif, c'est la même pour moi
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hmmmyes, this makes a lot of sense. and it explains why, when using certain colors, the surface of a shaded object will look somewhat "dead". (tho this is actually how colors will regularly blend, if you´re not working digitally - getting muddier and muddier, the more you mix. also depends on what pigments u use etc... but that´s really getting out of hand now!
i suppose for this it would make a lot of sense to experiment a bit with the different brush settings (same as those you have with layers, multiply and such), which really i have generally avoided since i became 17
thanks a lot for this input because, as you said, it opens up a wholly new vista on digital colormixing!
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Indeed, real paint mixing sometimes work like digital mixing, resulting in creating muddy colours. But there's also a lot of chemistry involved in real pigments mixing, that explains why you can actually obtain a vivid green by mixing the right yellow and blue pigments
I know this very cool website where the author has made tons of pretty cool experiments and explanations on pigments colour mixing (and other colour theory stuff) [link]
And you're right, the brush mode settings are really interesting. I use the "overlay" mode quite often to make my colours more vivid. However, although I know the formula behind this mode and "see" what it does, my mind isn't yet clear enough to explain that clearly :/
But I'm glad people actually understand what I meant, mean that I'm not that crazy
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Great analysis. I enjoyed reading it. Thanks for this.
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Thanks a lot for your input, I'm glad it's understandable a bit !
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I can honestly say that that is the most detailed tutorial on colour choices I have ever read
It's excellent, thank you for this... it gives us new ideas to mull over
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Thank you very much ! If you have any suggestion about a specific tutorial that could be useful, or that you haven't seen on DA yet, feel free to ask me. I also planned to do video demos, but I don't have anything to record my voice yet, so it'll come later
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Great reference! And I love your thoughts on color! I am terrible and have never looked at it quite so technically before! This is great! Thank you!
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Oh, the "technical" side is my speciality if I may say, I'm such a scientist I need to think about everything, which is very annoying sometimes
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