gouache, etc. white is also needed. CMY can create all of the colours that the eye can see, but the process of mixing reduces the saturation (the resulting mix will be darker). Really bright royal blue, green and red are affected. This is a theoretical rather than practical limitation: Only when side by side can the differences between CMY, RGB and life be seen because our eyes make constant adjustments in intensity and colour (which the camera has mimicked with its iris and auto white ballance). No one suggests that the colour in a magazine is ‘dull’ also it is a common mistake for beginners to use too much colour, especially in landscapes. Printer makers, hoping to sell more ink, have expended large sums trying to resolve this non-issue by adding more inks but we note that PC Pro Magazine’s top A Listed Photo Printer for over a year used just CMYK. Note: Printers use black in addition to CMY because they print a lot of text and for them black pigment is much less expensive than arriving at black via C+M+Y. Some Photographers wrongly believe that black is needed to achieve dense enough blacks. This was true 100 years ago when CMY pigments were in their infancy but it has not been true for most of those 100 years. The Truth about Colour There are rare occasions when fully saturated versions of these colours are needed. When this is evident, it is recommended that they should be acquired and used on a case by case basis and not used in every day mixing. Why has it taken 100 years for only some artists and educators to accept real from false colour basics? We could speculate – perhaps because things we were told at school and accepted as facts are not easily reversed, perhaps because most paint makers do not see it as their job to educate us when to do so may impact their bottom line and last but probably most significant, how can all those artists and educators, i.e. us, admit that we could have got it so wrong for so long? Peter Turner, a tutor in Watercolour and Oil for over 40 years (see www.art-courses.org), is the Author of ‘Oil and Watercolour Demystified’ ISBN 9780955758607 – upon which this article is based. Download PDF                      PTO St Emilion with normal and fully saturated colours