Cyan

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This article is about the color. For other senses of this word see cyan (disambiguation).

Cyan (from Greek κυανοs, meaning "blue") may be used as the name of any of a number of a range of colors in the blue/green part of the spectrum. The most important scientific definition is that specific color cyan that is the precise color obtained by mixing equal amounts of green and blue light (it also is a pure spectral color). As such, cyan is the complement of red: cyan pigments totally absorb red light.

Cyan used to be called aqua and before that it was called blue-green. The name "cyan" for printer's cyan has been in use since 1889. ^[1]

Some shades of color close to cyan in the cyan color range are baby blue, turquoise, and light blue.

[edit] Variations of cyan

[edit] Electric cyan (web color aqua) (electrical blue)

The vivid cyan that is seen on an electronic display device (shown at the top of this article) is also referred to as electric cyan to distinguish it from the less vivid turquoise-like cyan used in color printing.

The web color aqua is an alias for electronic cyan, i.e., it is exactly the same color.

To reproduce electric cyan in inks, it is necessary to add some white ink to the printer's cyan below, so when it is reproduced in printing, it is not a primary subtractive color and it is called aqua because it is the color of water(a name in use since 1598). ^[2] This color used to sometimes be also be called electric blue (a name which had been in use since 1884) because this color is the color of a lightning flash or an electric spark; this color term in reference to cyan has now been changed to electrical blue to avoid confusion with the color now called electric blue, the blue that registers on a computer screen as opposed to pigment blue. ^[3].

[edit] Printer's cyan (pigment cyan)

Cyan is also one of the common inks used in four-color printing, along with magenta, yellow, and black; this set of colors is referred to as CMYK.

Note that while both of these colors are called cyan they are actually substantially different from one another. Cyan printing ink is much less vivid--indeed, CMYK printing technology cannot accurately reproduce pure cyan as described above (100% blue + 100% green) on paper.

The source of the color sample of printer's cyan shown at right is the color cyan that is shown in the diagram located at the bottom of the following website offering tintbooks for CMYK printing: [1]. This color is also called pigment cyan.

[edit] Spectral reflectance curve of cyan

spectral reflectance curve

[edit] Cyan in human culture

• Cyan colored tiles are often used to pave swimming pools to make the water within them seem more inviting to swim in by making the color of the water seem more intense.
• The color cyan (then called aqua) was commonly used in the interior design of the 1950s in combination with either magenta or pink and black to give a modern feel to interiors.

[edit] References

1. ^ Merriam Webster's College Dictionary, 10th Edition, 1994, see under entry "cyan".
2. ^ Maerz and Paul The Dictionary of Color 1930 (see under Aqua in Index, Page 189)
3. ^ Maerz and Paul The Dictionary of Color 1930 (see under Electric Blue in Index, Page 194)

[edit] See also

• List of colors