Complimentary colors |
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Complimentary colors are made from opposite portions of the visible spectrum. Examine the color wheel.  Red is opposite cyan (the absence of red), green is opposite magenta (the absence of green). Inverting the wheel in Photoshop swaps the colors across the wheel. Another example Note: an after image is in the complimentary color. |
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Because of the different ways that colors are rendered by print and on computer screens and because the eye is unable to distinguish pure spectral colors from equivalents with more that one wavelength, inverting a photograph that may appear to be composed of complimentary colors may not have the desired effect. |