How Do We Use Color in Lighting? Part 2
How to Mix Colors
Here, at the request of a fabulous reader, I want to present to you with how to mix certain colors in each colorspace, and what kinds of colors go together, and the moods that they best fit! Let’s dive in!
The Nuts and Bolts of Mixing Colors on Your Lighting Console
The most basic lighting consoles will simply use faders to mix your colors, and if you want all of your fixtures together, you have to either build a submaster or address them all together on these basic setups.
Moving light consoles typically have a few options for choosing and mixing colors on your fixtures. The first is selecting them and mixing the colors using the encoder wheels.
You may also have an option of using a color picker or HSL – Hue, Saturation and Lightness mixing. Both the color picker and HSL mixing are typically the best, and possibly the only way to mix a color when you have both RGB and CMY lights selected at the same time.
For the exercise below, I want you to either use the encoder wheels or the faders on your console to manually mix the colors.
Stay away from the color picker and HSL mixer for right now – they’re great tools, but can lead to disappointment when you select a color and then what you get out of your lights is not all that close to what you selected!
It’s also really important to understand how to mix the colors, so that when it comes time to make a slight modification to a color, you know exactly which wheel to grab.
*It’s also very important to note that, since every light fixture is different, you’ll have to custom mix each color you like for your fixtures to get an exact match.
Some fixtures won’t be able to exact match with others for a number of reasons – CMY vs. RGB, different LED colors, etc. There are no “percentages” that you can simply plug into every fixture and get the same color!*
RGB Color Mixes
Red at Full + Green at Full = Yellow
Red at Full + Blue at Full = Magenta
Green at Full + Blue at Full = Cyan
Red at Full + Green at Full + Blue at Full = White
These 4 colors represent the very basics of color mixing with RGB stage lights. Here’s an exercise you can use to learn all of the color possibilities and make your head spin with wonder:
1. Sit down at your lighting console with just RGB lights selected.
2. Slowly, over 10 seconds, mix each of the colors above and fade between them slowly.
3. Now, you’ve seen 90% of all the colors that you can mix with your RGB lights. If you have an Amber or White LED, work with adding that in and see how it affects the colors you’ve mixed. At this point, your brain will probably be figuring out the other 10% of color mixes possible!
4. Try bringing in the 3rd color slowly as you have these mixed and note the great pastels that result. Also note the colors when one color is at full, and the other is at 50% intensity. Keep playing around and you’ll learn a ton!
CMY Color Mixes
Cyan at Full + Yellow at Full = Green
Cyan at Full + Magenta at Full = Blue
Yellow at Full + Magenta at Full = Red
Cyan at Full + Magenta at Full + Yellow at Full = Nearly Black
Try the same exercise as prescribed above for the RGB colors, and also cycle through the fixed color wheel if your lights have one. If you have both RGB and CMY mixing lights in your rig, dial up the same colors on both lights, and see the difference.
You’ll notice that when you really bring up intensity on the CMY wheels, your colors will get very dark and ugly compared to the RGB fixtures when you bring them up in intensity.
You would think that you may be able to recreate the exact match of colors with your RGB colors and CMY colors, and sometimes you can.
However, specific shades of any color can be difficult to match on the 2 different color mixing types for a number of reasons including LED color wavelength, and the “dead areas” where RGB and CMY can’t match.
You can see this in action by using your consoles color picker, and poking around at colors, especially saturated ones. Some colors will not match on the lights, even if they match on the screen!
This is because CMY color wheels subtract from white light, instead of adding colored light like RGB.
Physics gets in the way of the ideal in these circumstances! Darn physics! However, you can keep that in mind as you program and use the strongest colors from both your CMY and RGB fixtures in your looks.
Color Combinations that Work, and the Moods They Work With
Let’s switch gears now and talk about colors and color combinations that go really well together with specific moods. First things first, let’s go over colors and their emotional connections.
Color and Emotion
Every color has some kind of emotion tied to it, and color is just one way that we can express mood with stage lighting.
I’ve listed below the general moods and feelings that tend to go with these basic colors:
Red = Anger, Jealousy, Fear
Pink = Love, Light and Airy
Yellow = Poppy, Bright and Happy
Amber = Awakening, Rootsy and Raw
Green = Rootsy, Organic, Calming, Earthy
Aqua = Gentle, Simple, Water
Blue = Water, Night-time, Calm, Sullen
White = Open, Raw, Unfiltered
These colors generally express the emotions listed. Of course, this is a very simplified way of sharing moods with you, as there are so many millions of tints that each have their own character and moods.
For example faster songs tend to go best in red, yellow, or other bright colors, and slower songs look great in blues, purples and greens.
I hope that this gets you started thinking about how colors make you feel, and how you can apply that to lighting. So, without further ado, let’s jump in, talk and look at our first type of color scheme, monochromatic color schemes.
