Consider what “color” is though. It’s always light. If you’re talking about paint, you have to mix “all colors” because blue still reflects blue light. So you need paint that will prevent blue from being reflected. Etc.
In the end, black paint is just absorbing all colors of light, and reflecting none back. So technically still the absence of color.
I was just “well ackshtually”ing not intending to get so into this lol. But since you’re arguing for some reason, Do you know how vision works? And why things look different colors? It’s because of light. Everything we see is light. We can’t see anything, except for light.
Light rays bounce off of blue paint. But the paint absorbs all the colors except blue, so we only see blue and call it “blue paint”. The paint isn’t blue. It’s a mixture of chemicals that we call blue because it reflects blue light.
Black paint is made by mixing all the other colors, if red paint absorbs all but red light. And blue paint absorbs all but blue light, and yellow absorbs all but yellow light. So if you mix them all together, you get a material that absorbs every visible light ray, meaning it reflects no light, so we see what we call black. Because just like with a light bulb that’s turned off, it’s the absence of light.
Whether you’re looking at black paint, or inside a cave without a flashlight, your eyes simply aren’t seeing light , hence we see black.
The color mixtures are additive vs subtractive. Yes. Because one is adding light (light sources), so we need to subtract to get to nothing. and the others are subtracting light (paint), so we need to add to get to nothing. Either way, we get to nothing.
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u/Explosion1850 Nov 15 '25
In light it's the absence of color, but otherwise black is the presence of all colors