United States of America (USA) Flag Color Codes with HEX, RGB, CMYK & Pantone

Red, blue and yellow are the three primary colors. White is the absence of color and black is the presence of all colors.

You have black and white exactly backwards. In digital format, irrespective of RGB or CMYK, as in real life, white is the presence of all colors and black the absence of it. As evidence, the RGB hexidecimal code for black is 000000 – literally nothing – and white, FFFFFF – all values maxed out. IRL, hold a prism to sunlight and it refracts into color bans. The practical inverse shouldn’t need explanation.

AMERICA FIRST! AMERICA ONLY! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

You’re both partly right. For pigments, white is the absence of all colors and black is the presence of all colors. But for light, white is the presence of all colors and black is the absence of all colors.

The answer depends on whether we are talking about light or physical pigments.

In the RGB additive color model used for screens, black is the absence of emitted light, represented by #000000, while white is all three channels at maximum intensity, represented by #FFFFFF.

Paint, ink, and other pigments use subtractive color mixing. A white surface reflects most visible wavelengths, while pigments absorb portions of the light. Combining pigments generally produces a darker result because more wavelengths are absorbed. CMYK printing even uses a separate black ink because mixing cyan, magenta, and yellow does not usually create a clean, deep black.

So Jim is correct about RGB, but not about CMYK being the same. John’s explanation is closer to traditional pigment mixing, although red, yellow, and blue are the traditional art primaries rather than the scientific subtractive primaries, which are cyan, magenta, and yellow.