Why is the opposite of yellow on color wheels sometimes purple and sometimes blue?



Why is the opposite of yellow on color wheels sometimes purple and sometimes blue?


Question

Why do traditional color wheels have yellow opposite to violet (purple), whereas graphics programs such as Adobe Photoshop have yellow opposite to blue?

Yellow opposite violet (purple):

enter image description here

Yellow opposite blue:

enter image description here

2015/06/15
1
8
6/15/2015 6:09:00 PM

There are different color models which result in different opposites.

One is a subtractive color model (CMYK) -- the top image, where the opposite of yellow is purple. This is for real-world, tangible things like paint, ink, etc.

The other is a additive color model (RGB) -- the bottom image, where the opposite of yellow is blue. This is for light basically, screens, displays, bulbs, etc.

For more information see here: What is the difference between CMYK and RGB? Are there other color spaces I should know?

2017/04/13
3
4/13/2017 12:46:00 PM