Complementary colors

Are pairs of colors that are of opposite hue in some color model. The exact hue complementary to a given hue depends on the model in question, and perceptually uniform, additive, and subtractive color models, for example, have differing complements for any given color.

Color theory
In color theory, two colors are called complementary if, when mixed in the proper proportion, they produce a neutral color (grey, white, or black). In roughly-perceptual color models, the neutral colors (white, grays, and black) lie along a central axis. For example, in the HSV color space, complementary colors (as defined in HSV) lie opposite each other on any horizontal cross-section. Thus, in the CIE 1931 color space a color of a particular "dominant" wavelength can be mixed with a particular amount of the "complementary" wavelength to produce a neutral color (grey or white). In the RGB color model (and derived models such as HSV), primary colors and secondary colors are paired in this way:

red and cyan green and magenta Blue and yellow.

The RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three additive primary colors, red, green, and blue. The main purpose of the RGB color model is for the sensing, representation, and display of images in electronic systems, such as televisions and computers, though it has also been used in conventional photography. Before the electronic age, the RGB color model already had a solid theory behind it, based in human perception of colors. RGB is a device-dependent color model: different devices detect or reproduce a given RGB value differently, since the color elements (such as phosphors or dyes) and their response to the individual R, G, and B levels vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, or even in the same device over time. Thus an RGB value does not define the same color across devices without some kind of color management. Typical RGB input devices are color TV and video cameras, image scanners, and digital cameras. Typical RGB output devices are TV sets of various technologies (CRT, LCD, plasma, etc.), computer and mobile phone displays, video projectors, multicolor LED displays, and large screens such as JumboTron. Color printers, on the other hand, are not RGB devices, but subtractive color devices (typically CMYK color model). This article discusses concepts common to all the different color spaces that use the RGB color model, which are used in one implementation or another in color image-producing technology

Tints and shades

In color theory, a tint is the mixture of a color with white, which increases lightness, and ashade is the mixture of a color with black, which reduces lightness. A tone is produced either by mixing with gray, or by both tinting and shading. Mixing a color with any neutral color, including black and white, reduces the chroma, or colorfulness, while the hue remains unchanged. When mixing colored light (additive color models), the achromatic mixture of spectrally balanced red, green and blue (RGB) is always white, not gray or black. When we mix colorants, such as the pigments in paint mixtures, a color is produced which is always darker and lower in chroma, or saturation, than the parent colors. This moves the mixed color toward a neutral colora gray or near-black. Lights are made brighter or dimmer by adjusting their brightness, or energy level; in painting, lightness is adjusted through mixture with white, black or a color's complement. It is common among some artistic painters to darken a paint color by adding black paintproducing colors called shadesor to lighten a color by adding whiteproducing colors called tints. However, this is not always the best way for representational painting, since an unfortunate result is for colors to also shift in their hues. For instance, darkening a color by adding black can cause colors such as yellows, reds and oranges, to shift toward the greenish or bluish part of the spectrum. Lightening a color by adding white can cause a shift towards blue[clarification needed] when mixed with reds and oranges. Another practice when darkening a color is to use its opposite, or complementary, color (e.g. violet-purple added to yellowish-green) in order to neutralize it without a shift in hue, and darken it if the additive color is darker than the parent color. When lightening a color this hue shift can be corrected with the addition of a small amount of an adjacent color to bring the hue of the mixture back in line with the parent color (e.g. adding a small amount of orange to a mixture of red and white will correct the tendency of this mixture to shift slightly towards the blue end of the spectrum)
Extension of the color wheel: the color sphere. Colors nearest the center or the poles are most achromatic. Colors of the same lightness and saturation are of the same nuance. Colors of the same hue and saturation, but of different lightness, are said to be tints and shades. Colors of the same hue and lightness, but of varying saturation, are called tones.