Mix Colors in Photoshop as if they were Paint

By Dawn Pedersen · 06/10/2009 ·

Color Mixture

Photoshop uses light rather than paint to create color. Because of this, mixing colors of light is a slightly different animal from mixing paint. However in many cases, we get something similar to mixed paint when mixing two colors of light. In other cases, we get something a bit…off. I’m going to show you a technique for experimenting with color mixing in Photoshop. I’ll also show you the results of my color mixing experiments.

Before you begin, you might want to check out my article on the RGB color wheel. The primary colors of light are red, green and blue (hence “RGB”), not red, blue and yellow as in paint. Let’s try mixing RGB those primaries together. Then let’s try a few other combinations.

The Mixing Technique

Create a new Photoshop document.
Use the Rectangular Marquee tool to select the left half of the image window.

Use Rectangular Marquee tool to select left half

Select the left half

Pick a foreground color. I chose pure red (R:255, G:0, B:0).
Pick a background color. I chose pure blue (R:0, G:0, B:255).

Red and blue

Press Alt+Backspace (Mac: Opt+Backspace) to fill the selection with your foreground color.

Left half filled with red

Select > Inverse to invert the selection.
Press Ctrl+Backspace (Mac: Cmd+Backspace) to fill the selection with your background color.

Right half filled with blue

Use the Rectangular Marquee tool to make a selection through the middle somewhere so that it includes both colors. Mine is covering approximately the center one-third.

Rectangular selection in the center

Filter > Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius all the way up to 250.0 pixels and click OK.

Gaussian Blur

Press Ctrl+D (Mac: Cmd+D) to deselect. What you will have in the middle is a nice blend mixing the two colors.

In my case, right in the middle is a rich purple (R: 129, G: 0, B: 126). This is close to the result we would get with paint.

Mixture of pure red and pure blue

Rich purple

Note: A similar blending effect can be made using a Foreground-to-Background gradient. However, the result of the gradient contains more of the source colors, and less of the mixed colors, than when we use the mixing method above.

Mixing method versus gradient method

Next: Color Mixing Experiments

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Category: Photoshop, Tutorials

Tags: color picker, color theory, color wheel, Gaussian blur, Photoshop, Smudge tool

Comments

7 Comments

By georgeina, 06/11/2009 @ 12:26 am

Dawn you are an angel for putting together this tutorial. I’m going to have *so* much fun with this – but only once I stop work and start playing (in about 10 hours). x
By Dawn Pedersen, 06/12/2009 @ 4:58 pm

I’d glad you like it, Georgina!
By Steupz, 06/12/2009 @ 5:14 pm

I really came here to see if you were using the author highlight plugin, but having come here, this site is fantastic.

Do you design logos for other sites?
By Dawn Pedersen, 06/12/2009 @ 5:32 pm

Absolutely! Give me a buzz at 916-320-13741 or dawn@blulob.com.
By dave, 01/18/2011 @ 6:21 pm

Found your site/blog looking for ideas in 5 huge graphics classes that I teach with high school kids at all learning levels and grades. You’ve got some really well written tutorials that are fresh and more importantly, tight. Many, Many Thanks!!
By Daniel, 02/10/2011 @ 12:54 pm

This is a good article and I realize It was written a while ago so I don’t expect and answer back but I had a question about one of your examples. Based upon the additive color wheel adding red and green together should give you yellow. The complement to Red in the additive wheel is cyan. In your example of red and green being mixed together the result is brown. Thats where I start getting confused. That would happen in a subtractive color mode but I thought photoshop used additive color mixing to get its results. Could you further clarify what you meant by they are complements in this mode.
By carlos anglas, 02/15/2011 @ 7:28 am

this blur mixing method is really great, impossible to reach only with the gradient tool, thanks a lot!