This question doens’t have a straight answer because it is based on a faulty premise. The faulty premise is that, “The primary colours are Blue, Red and Yellow”.
It may come as a surprise to you that these are NOT the primary colours but when you are finished reading this, I hope you will agree.
The question posed is not the only place where the faulty premise is adopted. The same faulty premise is adopted by some of the other who have posted in this forum.
The explanation for why the faulty premise is so commonly adopted, I believe, may go beyond the following, but for the moment I want to address what appears to be a common confusion among the colours in the two most common colour pallettes that are the “Primary” colours. Those pallettes are, RGB and CMY (aka CMYK which is just CMY with Black added to increase contrast because the CMY pigments are not perfectly manufatured).
As has been noted here, the RGB colours are “additive” and since televisions are luminescent (unlike your Spiderman comic book), your television relies on RGB.
Your Spiderman comic, on the other hand, book reflects ambient light (sunlight – the full spectrum) which means that Spidey relies on CMY instead of RGB.
I think there is little surprising here, so far. However, here is something that I think will be a surprise to some people. Certain colours in these two systems are sometimes spoken of as if they are interchangeable! They are not! That is, Cyan (subtractive) is confused with Blue (additive) and Magenta (Subtractive) is confused with Red (Additive). Nobody confuses Yellow (Substractive) with Green (additive).
The failure to distinguish C/B and R/M is understandable, but this error is not merely a failure to distinguish two colours that have a similar appearance (which is understandable) – but more significantly, it is also a failure to understand the distinction between Additive and Subtractive colours.
So let’s look at the distinction between the Additive and Subtractive Primary colour palettes.
First and foremost, think of the Additive colours as a light source (like a television). The Additive colours work quite well and at their best when we are viewing them in the dark – ie in the absense of any other ambient light. Meanwhile, think of the Subtractive colours as light absorbing pigments which of course will work only where there is ambient full spectrum white light (like sunlight).
It is only in ambient full spectrum light that the subtractive pigments in the CMY system can function. Afterall, the CMY pigments can function only if there is something from which they can subtract colours.
Consider how Cyan pigment functions: You add Cyan pigmented ink to a page and allow white light to strike it. Not all of the white light is refelcted by the Cyan pigment – only Cyan coloured light is reflected. Now point a video camera at this Cyan light – Of the 3 (RGB) pixels that can be activated in the viewfinder, two of them will be activated and the third one will remain dark. Can you guess which are which? (I’m probably about to make a mistake – somebody correct me in a follow up post)… B+G are activated while R remains dark. Another way to think of the light reflected by Cyan pigment is Blue light and Green light – while Red light is absorbed by the pigment (“absorbed”=destroyed in this context – converted to heat). This is why CMK is called “Subtractive” – C is not so much Cyan but rather it is Red-absorbing (and BG-reflecting)
So please do not think of Cyan as “Blue” – rather, think of Cyan as “Red-subtracting pigment” (equivalently, “Cyan pigment is Blue and green reflecting”)
Okay, now what if you discard the Cyan Pigmented sample and let’s get a Magenta sample and subject it to ambient white light. Again, the white light strikes the pigment and some of it is reflected. Think of reflected and absorbed colours in RGB terms as in the video camera example – can you guess which of RGB is reflected and which is absorbed? Before you guess, I’ll point out something you might already know perfectly well: two of RGB are reflected and only 1 of RGB is absorbed. So which two are reflected? Which one is absorbed? Answer: R and B are reflected while G is absorbed (ie Green is effectively destroyed – it is “subtracted”).
So please do not think of Magenta as “Red” – Magenta is a Green-absorbing pigment (equivalently, it is Red and Blue reflecting).
To summarize,
Ambient light is RGB
Cyan – As a pigment, Cyan subtracts R from RGB and reflects GB
Magenta – As a picgment, Magneta subtracts G from RBG and relfects RB
Yellow – As a pigment, Yellow subtracts B from RGB and reflects RG
Now let’s look at it the other way. You can figure the following out by examining the preceding table and calculating the “subtractions” accordingly:
When using paint to depict a colourful scene of flowers or when depicting the same scene in ink on a magazine page, you may have only CMY pigments at your disposal, but you can use them to produce each of R, G and B by using subtraction as implied by the preceding information – in just this way:
To produce B, you must subtract both G and R from ambient RGB, therefore mix:
Cyan (reflect only G and B – not R)
Magenta (relfect only R and B – not G)
This leaves ONLY B reflected (verify the subtraction yourself – have I made an error?)
To produce G, you must subtract both B and R from ambient RGB, therefore mix:
Cyan (reflect only G and B – absorb R)
Yellow (relfect only R and G – subtract B)
This leaves ONLY G reflected (verify the subtraction yourself – have I made an error?)
[NOTE: The preceding is why it is commonly said – including in this forum – that Blue and Yellow make Green. This is how people commonly confuse Blue with Cyan. As you can now see, that is not exactly accurate – Now you know that it is more accurate to say that a mixture of (subtractive-palette) Cyan and (Subtractive-palette) Yellow pigments exposed to full spectrum ambient light will reflect (Additive-palette) Green light. But nobody wants to say THAT! : ) ]
Finally, to produce R, you must subtract both B and G from ambient RGB, therefore mix:
Magenta (reflect only R and B – absorb G)
Yellow (relfect only R and G – subtract B)
This leaves ONLY R reflected (verify the subtraction yourself – have I made an error?)
I hope this helps makes it clear why it is no small error to confuse Cyan with Blue (and Magenta with Red) and more importantly, I hope this makes clear the distinction (and relationship) between and the two commonly understood primary colour palettes: RGB and CMY
How does this answer the question? It doesn’t answer your question directly, but I hope that you now see that there is no direct answer to your question since it is apparently based on a faulty premise.
