Acolor triangle is an arrangement ofcolors within atriangle, based on theadditive orsubtractive combination of threeprimary colors at its corners.
An additivecolor space defined by three primary colors has achromaticitygamut that is a color triangle, when the amounts of the primaries are constrained to be nonnegative.[1][2]
Before the theory of additive color was proposed byThomas Young and further developed byJames Clerk Maxwell andHermann von Helmholtz, triangles were also used to organize colors, for example around a system ofred, yellow, and blue primary colors.[3]
After the development of theCIE system, color triangles were used as chromaticity diagrams, including briefly with thetrilinear coordinates representing the chromaticity values.[4] Since the sum of the three chromaticity values has a fixed value, it suffices to depict only two of the three values, using Cartesian co-ordinates. In the modernx, y diagram, the large triangle bounded by the imaginary primaries X, Y, and Z has corners (1, 0), (0, 1), and (0, 0), respectively; color triangles with real primaries are often shown within this space.
Maxwell was intrigued byJames David Forbes's use of colortops. By rapidly spinning the top, Forbes created the illusion of a single color that was a mixture of the primaries:[5]
[The] experiments of Professor J. D. Forbes, which I witnessed in 1849… [established] that blue and yellow do not make green, but a pinkish tint, when neither prevails in the combination…[and the] result of mixing yellow and blue was, I believe, not previously known.
— James Clerk Maxwell, Experiments on colour, as perceived by the eye, with remarks on colour-blindness (1855),Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Maxwell took this a step further by using a circular scale around the rim with which to measure the ratios of the primaries, choosingvermilion (V),emerald (EG), andultramarine (U).[6]
Initially, he compared the color he observed on the spinning top with a paper of different color, in order to find a match. Later, he mounted a pair of papers, snow white (SW) andivory black (Bk), in an inner circle, thereby creating shades of gray. By adjusting the ratio of primaries, he matched the observed gray of the inner wheel, for example:[7]
To determine the chromaticity of an arbitrary color, he replaced one of the primaries with a sample of the test color and adjusted the ratios until he found a match. Forpale chrome (PC) he found. Next, he rearranged the equation to express the test color (PC, in this example) in terms of the primaries.
This would be the precursor to thecolor matching functions of theCIE 1931 color space, whose chromaticity diagram is shown above.
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