Color space The color-space concept was likely due to Hermann Grassmann, who developed it in two stages. First, he developed the idea of vector space, which allowed the algebraic representation of geometric concepts in formula_1-dimensional space. Fearnley-Sander (1979) describes Grassmann's foundation of linear algebra as follows: With this conceptual background, in 1853, Grassmann published a theory of how colors mix; it and its three color laws are still taught, as Grassmann's law. Colors can be created in printing with color spaces based on the CMYK color model, using the subtractive primary colors of pigment (cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), and black
Secondary color secondary CMY colors (with secondary colors in boldface) are: Ideally, combining three perfect primary colors in equal amounts would produce black, but this is impossible to achieve in practice. Therefore a "key" pigment, usually black, is added to printing to produce dark shades more efficiently. This combination is referred to as CMYK, where K stands for Key. Before the discovery of CMY, at least as far back as Goethe, the best primary colors were thought to be red, yellow, and blue. Mixing these pigments in equal amounts produces orange, green, and purple: That is, the primary and secondary RYB colors