In 1820, Turner believed in 3 primaries: yellow, red, blue. Artists of this generation liked the idea of irreduceable number of elements. Turner went further because each had meanings blue=distance, red=material, yellow=light/medium.
OK, toss his meanings, everyone talks of primary colors, only a few paints are needed mixed to make other colors, must be true. Right?
OK play that forward, we have the primary inks of printing, CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), from that we can print anything… hey wait a minute why do the new fancy pro printers have 8 inks …and they do create better looking images. Maybe inks and paints aren’t as primary as we were taught in school.
The only true primaries in human perception is our 3 primary cones red, green, blue, but more about them and the imperfect human color vision in a later post.
Why are primaries always so political?