: How do you find an inverse colour? In printing, CMY are the inverse colours of RGB (possibly not in the right order!) and in light a colour negative is made up of the inverse colours of what

@Si6392903

Interesting question.

First. Remember that colors can be arranged in a color wheel, but in reality that is not a circle, but a solid, that can come in different shapes, depending on what color model we want to choose.

For example, the RGB-CMY solid is a cube.



Here is an HBS solid. As it is a 3D object we need to choose our parameters of "inverse". You can choose an inverse color on the same "slice" (A) or across the height of the solid (B) Depending on the model an inverse color of any of the top slice will be black in this case (C).



If you want, you simply choose an opposite color adding 180° to the choosen color.



We also can choose opposite colors seeing the RGB components as graphs, in this case, the range is from 0 to 255.

We add colors modifying this values, adding more color, sliding the graph upwards (or simply adding a bigger number)

You can see that if you do not assign 255 to any RGB slider, you have a gap.

This gap is the value of the opposite color:



Let us see how this reacts to some known opposite colors.


Red is the opposite of cyan in our color wheel. Checked.
Black is the opposite of white. Checked.




This makes changes to the RGB solid in 3 dimensions.

So the inverse of a light color is a dark color:



But if you want to stick to changes in the same plane, the graph itself provides the lower and the upper limit of the changes. Now the opposite of a light color is the opposite hue, but the same brightness:



So at the end, it is simply a matter of counting your RGB values and make a series of subtractions.

Here is a related explanation to modify the same color to a lighter and darker one using the same methodology: How to make a given color a bit darker or lighter?



P.S. This is actually how different blending modes on different programs work. Making some simple arithmetic operations on the values of the colors. Inverse, Multiply, difference, etc.

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@Ogunnowo857

Take pure white as combination of all colors. When this white light hits an object some colors are absorbed, and some colors are reflected. The color we humans perceive and generally identify the object as are the colors that were reflected NOT the colors that were absorbed.

The inverse of a color is most widely defined as the absorbed light.

Within color models this is approximated within each models mathematical constraints.

For more reading you should look into Goethe's Theory of Colors, 1810

There's many articles on the it too:

www.sciartmagazine.com/blog/art-versus-science-color-theory-war-between-goethe-and-newton www.brainpickings.org/2012/08/17/goethe-theory-of-colours/ www.openculture.com/2013/09/goethes-theory-of-colors-and-kandinsky.html

I also discussed it a bit in the first part of my answer here, What are the pros and cons of Lab

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@Cofer715

For CMY to RGB, in a linear colorspace where the color components range linearly from 0 to 1, the conversion is

C = 1-R
M = 1-G
Y = 1-B


See for example this online CMYK-RGB converter (assuming K=0).

However, when the range is nonlinear, such as in the sRGB colorspace,
there is no exact conversion. See this Wikipedia article which says, among other things,


Since RGB and CMYK spaces are both device-dependent spaces, there is
no simple or general conversion formula that converts between them.
Conversions are generally done through color management systems, using
color profiles that describe the spaces being converted. Nevertheless,
the conversions cannot be exact, particularly where these spaces have
different gamuts.


About "why is it inverse", the same article explains


Such a model [CMYK] is called subtractive because inks "subtract" brightness
from white.

In additive color models, such as RGB, white is the "additive"
combination of all primary colored lights, while black is the absence
of light. In the CMYK model, it is the opposite: white is the natural
color of the paper or other background, while black results from a
full combination of colored inks.


See also this
technical article from Adobe which demonstrates RGB versus CMY
colorspaces. Unfortunately the animation is phoney; it contains actual green frames rather than letting your eye create the green color from the spinning wheel.

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