In "Everything you ever wanted to know about color....."

if I built a TV that used cyan, magenta, and yellow phosphors? Or did offset color printing with red, blue, green (and black?) ink. Well the TV would be black, as CMY are used for reflective (subtractive) models not transmissive (additive). CMY subtracts from the source light and there would nothing left of the light As for offset printing, red, blue and green inks are used all time as spot colors (Pantone). But you can't use them to make a full color images. CMY again subtracts from white light souce and white paper reflects back the 'full color' image, you brain does the blending for you. This is why printing inks are semi-translucent, they don't work if you can see paper through them. Pantones however are opaque inks because the color is already mixed.

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