   4 base colors on Digital Cameras, instead of RGB
  I saw an ad about how some digital camera company (HP or Canon I think) spent years developing a fourth color for their cameras, taking it from RGB to RGB+some blueish-aqua color.  My question is this:Why have 3 colors that are pretty similar, and "cool" colors (green and blue, plus the new color), but only one ''version'' or red, or anything like it?I know the green and blue are there because red, green, and blue are the 3 colors of light that can mix to make any color, but it seems they just mixed the two colors to get the fourth.  So why not mix something with red and have 5 colors? 
  I''m not sure what you''re talking about, but I imagine it has something to do with the fact that green is the most important of the three colors.  That''s why 16bit color often times has a 6 bits for green rather than 6 bits for red or blue.  So a method that will capture the green more accuratly is more important than a method that captures red more accuratly.CM ;  Are you sure it was talking about adding a color to RGB and not just using a different color system (like Cyan Yellow Magenta Black = CYMK)? ;quote:Original post by Extrarius  Are you sure it was talking about adding a color to RGB and not just using a different color system (like Cyan Yellow Magenta Black = CYMK)?   I was thinking the same thing.  This is probably the case, unless it is storing infra red or ultra violet information in there too.  (IRGBU)   Happiness is just a word to me, and it might have meant a thing or two if I''d have known the difference.Clouded Skies;  What would be cool was if, instead of mixing RGB to get a color, you just referred to the light frequency, say 0x00000000 = 375THz (lowest Hz visible), and 0xffffffff = 750THz (highest Hz visible), and you'd also have to specify the strength. Offcourse, it would be difficult to make a screen that could work that way.   [edited by - Jesper T on February 6, 2004 2:25:21 PM];  its RGBE, developed by Sony.the 4 color CCD increases image quality by better sampling the color data per pixel, and increasing the color gamut. Its cyan because of the color sampling matrix, see for more details:http://www.dpreview.com/news/0307/03071601sonyrgbeccd.asp ;  the example photo produced by RGBE does look more natural.Is this going to be implemented in computer monitors as well? That would be cool. ;  Yeah, it was the Sony.  I saw it in Spin magazine.  They had little piles of powder colored the four different colors.  So again, could it look even better with 5 color channels? ;  The RGB system has nothing to do with some magical property of those three colors of light to mix and produce any other color.  It exists because those are the colors that the photoreceptors in the eye are sensitive to.  But this is not a constant in the animal kingdom.  Not all species have color receptors.  Not all species with color receptors have the same number of types, or the same color sensitivities.  Hell, there''s one species of shrimp that has more than 10 different types of color receptor, each most senstive to a different frequency.  If our eyes were like theirs, we may have easily devised a color-mixing scheme with 10+ primary colors.Anyway, back on topic, there are, in fact, an infinite number of light wavelengths in the visible, and the more different color receptors you use, the more physically acurate the image will be.;  I thought the extra colour would have been a greenish one - human eyes are more sensitive to green (hence 16-bit colour = 5 bit red, 5 bit blue, 6 bit green). 