Magenta

Magenta

This article is about the dye colour magenta. Magenta is also a town in Northern Italy, where the Battle of Magenta occurred. Magenta is also a commune of the Marne département in France.

Magenta is a color that is not a spectral color: that is to say, the hue cannot be generated by light of a single wavelength. A magenta hue is generated by mixing equal amounts of red and blue light. As such, magenta is the complement of green: magenta pigments absorb green light.

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Magenta was one of the first aniline dyes, discovered shortly after the Battle of Magenta (1859), which occurred near the town of Magenta in northern Italy. The colour is named after the battle, and hence indirectly after the town.

The difference between magenta and purple is the amount of red/blue in the color. Defining red as having RGB coordinates 255 0 128 and blue as having coordinates 0 0 255, magenta is a mixute of 2 shades of red and one shade of blue.

The colour magenta is sometimes also known as Fuchsia after the colour of the flowers of the same name, named after Leonard Fuchs.