Color basics

Cyan

A bright blue-green, central to CMY printing and digital color diagrams.

Modern / print and screen Blue-green light and process color seed

What it is

Cyan sits between blue and green. On screens it can be intensely luminous; in print it is one of the process-color foundations used to subtract red light from a white surface.

Basics

Cyan is one of the three CMY subtractive primaries.
In RGB screen color, cyan appears when green and blue light are high while red is low.
It often reads as clean, technical, aquatic, cold, or luminous depending on context.

Notes for later expansion

Later expansion should distinguish screen cyan from print cyan and historical blue-green pigments.
Cyan is useful for explaining the bridge between RGB and CMY systems.

What it is

Basics

Notes for later expansion

Tags