Tag: Colour

In the previous post I looked at how coloured shadows are formed. As I wrote it, I realised how much there is to learn from the coloured shadows demonstration; that’s what this post is about. The image above shows coloured shadows cast by a white paper disc with a grey surround.

In the image at the top, we’re mixing shadows. If we were mixing lights in the normal way, it would look like the picture on the right.

So what do we learn from the coloured shadows image?

Red, green and blue add to make white

The white paper disc has all three lights shining on it, and it appears white. Mixing lights shows us this too.

The three lights still exist independently when they are mixed

Some descriptions of colour light mixing could leave you with the impression that when we mix red, green, and blue lights together to make white, they combine to make a new kind of light, a bit like the way butter, eggs, flour and sugar combine to create something completely different: a cake.

But if that were so, we’d only get a black shadow. The fact that we get three coloured shadows show that the three coloured lights maintain their independence even though they’re passing through the same region of space. It’s very like ripples on a pond: if you throw two pebbles into a pond, the two sets of ripples spread through the same region of water, each one travelling through the water as if the other pebble’s ripples weren’t there.

Coloured shadows obey subtractive colour mixing rules

When we mix coloured lights, additive colour mixing rules apply:

• Red and blue make magenta.
• Red and green make (surprisingly) yellow.
• Blue and green make cyan.
• All three colours add to make white.

In the coloured shadows image, it looks at first glance as if we are adding together coloured lights. But if we were, we’d expect the centre of the pattern, where all the lights overlap, to be white, as it is in the light-mixing image. Instead, the centre of the coloured shadows pattern is black.

The reason is that we aren’t adding coloured lights, we’re adding coloured shadows, and now subtractive colour mixing rules – the rules of mixing paints – apply.

In the cyan shadow, red has been blocked by the disc, leaving green and blue. In the yellow shadow, blue has been blocked by the disc, leaving red and green. Where the cyan and yellow shadows overlap, the only colour that has not been blocked by one disc or the other is green, so that’s the colour we see. We get the same result when we mix blue and yellow paints: the only colour that both paints reflect well is green. (If the blue and yellow paints reflected only blue and only yellow respectively, the mixture would appear black.)

In the black centre of the pattern, all three lights are blocked by the disc. Something similar happens when you mix every colour in your paint box together.

Colour printing is based on these subtractive colour mixing rules.

Brightness matters, and blue isn’t very bright

In either of the light- or shadow-mixing images, the boundaries between the regions aren’t all equally distinct. The least distinct ones are:

• magenta and red
• green and cyan
• blue and black
• yellow and white

In each case, the difference in the colours is the presence or absence of blue light.

There are two things at work here. Firstly, more than we might think, our vision is based on brightness, not on colour. We happily watch black-and-white movies; after a while we hardly notice the absence of colour.

Secondly, our sensation of brightness is largely due to the red-yellow-green end of the spectrum – blue makes a very small contribution, if any. So although the presence or absence of blue light can have a strong effect on colour, it has a weak effect on brightness. So boundaries defined by the presence or absence of blue light tend to be relatively indistinct compared to those defined by the presence or absence of red or green light.

This is a photograph that I took as a response to a challenge that was set by photographer Kim Ayres as part of his weekly podcast Understanding Photography. The challenge was to produce a photo where the main interest was provided by shadows. I lit a rose cutting using red, green, and blue lights that were about 3 metres away and 30 centimetres apart from each other. The result is a gorgeous display of coloured shadows. Coloured shadows are nothing new, but they are always lovely.

Kim suggested that I do a blog post to explain more about how coloured shadows arise. To do this I set up an arrangement for creating simple coloured shadows. One part of the arrangement is three lights: red, green, and blue arranged in a triangle.

The lights shine upon a white screen set up about 3 metres away. In front of the screen, a wire rod supports a small black disc.

First of all, let’s turn on the red light only. The screen appears red, and we can see the shadow of the disc on it. The shadow occupies the parts of the screen that the red light can’t reach because the disc is in the way.

Next, we’ll turn on the green light only. Now the screen appears green, and for the same reasons as before, there’s a shadow on it. The shadow is further to the left than it was with the red light; this is because the green light is to the right of the red light as you face the screen.

Next, we’ll turn on the blue light only, with the expected result. The blue light is lower than the red and green ones, so the shadow appears higher on the screen. (The shadow is less sharp than the previous two. This is because my blue light happens to be larger than the red or green lights).

Now we’re going to turn on both the red and green lights. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we see two shadows. They are in the same places as the shadows we got with the red and green lights on their own. But now they are coloured. The shadow cast by the red light is green. This is because, although the disc blocks red light from this part of the screen, it doesn’t block green light, so the green light fills in the red light’s shadow. Similarly, the shadow cast by the green light is red.

The screen itself appears yellow. This is because, by the rules of mixing coloured lights (which aren’t the same as the rules for mixing coloured paints), red light added to green light gives yellow light.

We can do the same with the other possible pairs of lights: red & blue, and green & blue. (The green shadow looks yellowish here. It does in real life too. I think this is because it’s being seen against the bluish background.)

We’re now going to turn on all three lights. As you might expect, we get three shadows. The colours of the shadows are more complicated now. The shadow cast by the red light is filled in with light from both of the other lights – green and blue – so it has the greeny-blue colour traditionally referred to as cyan. The shadow cast by the green light is filled in with light from the red and blue lights, so it is the colour traditionally called magenta. And the shadow cast by the blue light is filled in with light from the red and green lights, and thus appears yellow.

The rest of the screen, which is illuminated by all three lights, is white, because the laws for mixing coloured lights tell us that red + green + blue = white. The white is uneven because my lights had rather narrow and uneven beams.

Finally, let’s add further richness by using a larger disc, so that the shadows of the three lights overlap. Now we get shadows in seven colours, as follows.

Where the disc blocks one light and allows two lights to illuminate the screen, we see the colours of the three pairwise mixtures of the lights: yellow  (red+green), magenta (red+blue), and cyan (green+blue).

Where the disc blocks two lights and allows only one light to illuminate the screen, we see the colours of the three individual lights: red, green, or blue.

And in the middle, there’s a region where the disc blocks the light from all three lights, so here we get a good old-fashioned black shadow.

If it’s a bit hard to wrap your head around this, let’s trying looking at things from the screen’s point of view. Here I’ve replaced the screen with a thin piece of paper so that the shadows are visible from both sides. I’ve made holes in the screen in the middle of each of the coloured regions, so that we can look back through the screen towards the lights.

Here’s what you see when we look back through the magenta shadow. We can see the red light and the blue light, but not the green one – it’s hidden behind the disc.

This is the view looking back through the green shadow. We can see only the green light. The red and blue lights are hidden behind the disc.

And so on…

I’ve written some more thoughts about coloured shadows here.