Tool: Color Mixer as Light

[Ketenks]

If there was a tool that could mix colors in the way that they would mix if they were actual light, then that would be an awesome feature.

[Maximilian]

You can try Tanel's Color Mixer which is part of Tanel's Photo and Color Plugins pack, although I'm not sure if it does what you're looking for.

[Ketenks]

I have it and it does well for mixing colors as colors. I would very much like to mix colors as light coming out of a prism. That would be awesome.

[Red ochre]

But they are actual light! - try the additive blend mode.

(I'd like a way of mixing that mimicked real pigments! - but that's too complex for me - real pigments behave both as filters (additive) and subtractively).
Raw Umber is a weird one: - with solvent it is a dark yellow, with white pigment added it tends towards purple? lovely stuff!
Big difference between light red and pink too?

 

... Are you unhappy about the red/green transition?... yellows too dark?... I've tried the previously suggested squaring algorithm with little benefit.
Computer screens just seem a bit weak on vibrant yellows, but all colour is relative.
I cannot see anything wrong in the way pdn handles colour but you are welcome to experiment via codelab.

[Ketenks]

Hmm, maybe you can help me. I've tried to mix the colors in additive, average, hard light, soft light, vivid light blend modes and I don't think any are getting the result of what you would get if you mixed them as light. But I could be doing it wrong.

 

 

Is there a color mixer for this kind of thing?

Particularly that has this sort of detail to the way the color mixes. Something that is very light like.

Edited April 2, 2017 by Ketenks
Added a qualifying statement.

[Ketenks]

I guess it is Additive blending but it doesn't seem to be right. Working on it.

[Ketenks]

So this is what I may be referring to: in trying to recreate that above image with 3 of my own colors I've had a lot of trouble doing it with blend modes. Transparency can get the effect very easily like so:

 

 

But I need these to mix as light. After trying it with Additive blending, it was a serious pain to blend them all exactly like this, so I gave up. Which is why I think there must be a tool which could just do "transparency" but as light.

 

EDIT: I figured it out.

 

But it was still far more involved than I think it needs to be. I feel like there should be a tool that makes transparency as light. Maybe it isn't very useful for most people though. Oh well. I'll have to do it the long way I guess.

Edited April 2, 2017 by Ketenks

[Eli]

My try with Additive blending  and Gaussian Blur effect : 

[Ketenks]

That's better but it's not how it would really look like if it was light. Particularly the yellow-blue cross section seems too white. And I know it's probably because of the selection of the color area, but that red in between the yellow and purple and the light cyan in between the yellow and blue shouldn't be there. I feel like it should be a lot easier and a lot easier to get it looking exactly as though they were transparent, but as light.

 

Nevertheless, how did you blend all the layers together?

[Eli]

One more try : 

 

Edited April 2, 2017 by Eli

[Ketenks]

Now you'll really have to tell me how you did it. But the colors still seem the same.

 

Why is the yellow and blue mix so white? The color can be clearly seen in my raw color version.

 

And why is there that red in between the purple and yellow? Is that an artifact of the selection quality or is it really what light would do?

 

And surely the mixed lights should be more visible. But...to my utter displeasure maybe not. But hopefully yes.

 

EDIT: If the nature of colored light is to brighten itself when mixed then to see the mixed cross sections more clearly the intensity of the source lights would have to increase, probably by a lot.

 

Edited April 2, 2017 by Ketenks

[MJW]

Eli, that's impressive, but why are the colors yellow, cyan, and magenta rather than the light primaries, yellow, green, and red?

[Eli]

Ketenks, I used Additive blending and Gaussian Blur.  I also merged all three layers on a black background then I just changed the blending mode to Overlay. Then I added a DESATURATED brick wall underneath. I do not know much about color or light theory so I can not answer to your questions.

 

MJW, I used the colors that Ketenks used in his examples above.  

Edited April 2, 2017 by Eli

[MJW]

I should have read the other comments, I guess!

[dipstick]

Just for fun and because this topic is interesting....

 

[Ketenks]

Eli, very nice. How does one go about blending them all at once? Did you have to do it as I did where you blend one layer at a time? Then merge the layers? In your first post it shows a fully blended image but with 3 unmerged layers. Are they somehow transparently additive right there? How is that done?

 

Dipstick that's cool but I don't think the colors are mixing as light very much. There really should be white where they all mix in and yellow where there is green and red and whatever else for an additive blend. I see the magenta and yellow but barely. How can one increase the intensity of the cross sections?

[Ketenks]

This is how I'm thinking of what blending should be: a blend mode that you set on a fader for a layer just like transparency. The layer won't look any different until things come over it or under it, then it blends with that to the measure you put the fader, just like transparency, but it blends it according to the fashion of the blend mode. In this way you could blend 50 layers at once in 50 different modes and not have to do them individually, copying them each or having them each in a file, as I am having to do now.

 

Am I missing something or does that not sound way better as a way to blend?

[AndrewDavid]

 

 

Looks to me what you want?

 

Edited August 25, 2021 by AndrewDavid
Removed upload

[dipstick]

[Ketenks]

Yes, that is the additive way of blending: as light. However, how are you doing it?

 

All that I have, to do blends, is Blendmodes Plus and I can only blend 2 things at one time. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I can't blend all the colors as additive as though each layer were additive at one time, the same way you might have each layer transparent at one time.

[AndrewDavid]

8 minutes ago, Ketenks said:

Yes, that is the additive way of blending: as light. However, how are you doing it?

No Plugins used - just gradient linear reflected colors. Both layers (for each color) are additive and 118 opacity.

We love a challenge around here. 

 

 

 

[Ketenks]

How is the layer additive?

 

EDIT: I'm an idiot. It's just a layer property...I was running around trying to find a layer property...Haha. The very thing I was needing and talking about. I knew I had to be missing something.

Edited April 2, 2017 by Ketenks

[Ketenks]

Thanks guys.

 

And now that you've all shown me how to do it, here is my solution:

 

 

Thanks for the learn up. This is could be way better too but now I can do what I need for sure.

Edited April 3, 2017 by Ketenks
Fixed solution

[Ketenks]

EDIT: Sorry, the solution wasn't working right so I posted it here, then I fixed it and moved it back up there.

Edited April 3, 2017 by Ketenks

[Ketenks]

And lastly to answer MJW, the identity of these colors is...a musical chord!

 

I've been working on a project that takes the light harmony of sound and so I wanted to start looking into what chords would look like in the rainbow spectrum. This particular chord is from a different tuning than standard tuning (since that is the purpose of the project: to find different tunings) and it represents the notes: B, D and F.

 

The cross sections are the most important since they are what represent the chord's signature if you will. And I'm using the spread for my own analysis and fun.

 

So thanks all. I can start throwing musical light around.