Is there really a color purple, or is it just in our minds?

telcodad

Who knew?

Does the color purple really exist?
The color purple is, in a way, invented by our brains.
By Alice Sun, Live Science - June 14, 2025
https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/does-the-color-purple-really-exist

The world is awash with the color purple — lavender flowers, amethyst gemstones, plums, eggplants and purple emperor butterflies. But if you look closely at the visible-light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, you’ll notice that purple (which is different from bluish hues of violet and indigo) is absent.

That’s because purple may be made up by our brains; It exists only because of how the brain processes color. So does that mean purple doesn’t really exist? Not necessarily. The answer lies within the mind-boggling way that our brains perceive and combine different wavelengths on the visible light spectrum. ….

takeahike

It’s a book, a leading film and the name given to swing states, so kind of has to be! 😂😂

Kathy_9

telcodad Elementary my dear Watson, or should I say Secondary. . .

telcodad

From that article:

…. When light hits our eyeballs, these three receptors take in information about the light and their respective wavelengths and send electrical signals to the brain. The brain then takes that information and makes an average deduction of what it’s seeing. “Our machinery is sort of doing this complex sort of calculation of these three different ratios all the time,” which forms our perception of color, Johnson said. For example, if long-wavelength and mid-wavelength cones are triggered, the brain infers that we’re seeing orange or yellow. If mid-wavelength and short-wavelength cones are activated, the brain will make a conclusion of teal.

So what about purple? When short-wavelength (blue) and long-wavelength (red) cones are stimulated, your brain “makes something that’s actually not out there in the world,” Johnson said. Red and blue are on opposite ends of the visible spectrum: When the brain encounters these wavelengths, it ends up bending this linear visible spectrum into a circle. In other words, it brings red and blue together to make purple and magenta, even though that’s not what light is really doing.

As a result, purple and magenta are known as “nonspectral” colors, because they don’t really exist as actual electromagnetic radiation. Nonspectral colors like purple are made of two wavelengths of light. In contrast, spectral colors — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and, importantly, violet and indigo — are made of just one wavelength. …

Somewhat-Reticent

Kathy_9 Those are the additive colors, yes.
Subtractive colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow.
( Yellow is both!! )

thos-edison

telcodad So, that makes brown just “dark orange”, right? 🫥

telcodad

thos-edison So, that makes brown just “dark orange”, right? 🫥

Sort of. You can get brown by mixing equal amounts of red and yellow (making orange) and then blue. 😉

CrashMan

thos-edison So, that makes brown just “dark orange”, right?

Brown.

Heat84

telcodad

I wonder what Prince, Jimi Hendrix, and Deep Purple would think about this question.

telcodad

Heat84 I wonder what Prince, Jimi Hendrix, and Deep Purple would think about this question.

You mean Red/Blue Rain, Red/Blue Haze and Deep Red/Blue? 😉

Astyanax

All cops and judges apparently are blind to this.

HFB1217

Or So they do Say

Somewhat-Reticent

HFB1217 T-Mobile found out magenta is not purple …

HFB1217

Somewhat-Reticent

Somewhat-Reticent
HFB1217 T-Mobile found out magenta is not purple

…

Checkout the Color Charts

Somewhat-Reticent

HFB1217 More specifically, magenta is not red.

telcodad

Somewhat-Reticent More specifically, magenta is not red.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magenta

Magenta is a purple-red color. On color wheels of the RGB (additive) and CMY (subtractive) color models, it is located precisely midway between blue and red. It is one of the four colors of ink used in color printing by most color printers, along with yellow, cyan, and black to make all the other colors. Magenta is a color made by mixing red and blue. …

Somewhat-Reticent

telcodad A little more red, it’s violet; more blue, it’s purple … or indigo?
( Sometimes Wikipedia helps confuse things - like color models … )

paulsweet

ROY G BIV says that purple (violet) is a part of the visible spectrum.

I have a prism in my study window, and it projected all the colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue (cyan), indigo (dark blue) , and violet on the floor. I tried to take a picture, but yellow & green were too bright and washed out the other colors.

Infrared is wavelengths longer than red, and ultraviolet is wavelengths shorter than violet.

Somewhat-Reticent

From Memes &c: image