[SpiralEye]

I'm currently trying to understand how colored light mixes on colored surfaces. I got a little color model in photoshop that shows me how colored light mixes with colored light (basically just everything painted in screen mode) but I'm unsure how say, a yellow light on a blue object would look. See, I know that the object looks blue because it reflects only the blue light hitting it, but . . . I'm just confused. And my ad-hock photoshop color model doesn't work right in all cases. Any help out there?

[Bilbo]

Hey SpiralEye... I'm no expert on this but i'll just share my ideas- The way i understand it, if a perfectly filtered yellow light hits a perfectly blue surface, all light will be absorbed by the surface (meaning no light gets reflected of it) and it won't seem lit at all... but i don't know whether such filters exist in reality- i'm guessing that every colored light in reality contains the entire frequency range with differing intensities, which means that a yellow light will make yellowish objects better lit than say blue ones.
The 'screen' mode in photoshop probably isn't a good emulator of real light behavior.

[Blind Tree Frog]

Again, not an expert, but I remember the answer being the same as above. The colored light hits the colored surface. The frequencies that can reflect do and the rest get absorbed.

Yellow on white would reflect yellow
Yellow on yellow would reflect yellow
Yellow on blue would reflect black (I believe... it should be the most opposite color)
if I am remembering correctly Yellow on red would reflect red
and Yellow on green would reflect green.