Cyan is a pure spectral color, but the same hue can also be generated by mixing equal amounts of green and blue light. As such, cyan is the complement of red: cyan pigments absorb red light. Cyan is sometimes called blue-green and often goes undistinguished from light blue.

An example of a cyan color in the RGB color space has intensities [0, 221, 221] on a 0 to 255 scale. On a browser that supports visual formatting in Cascading Style Sheets, the following box should appear in this color:

Cyan is one of the common inks used in four-color printing, along with magenta, yellow, and black; this set of colors is referred to as CMYK.

See also: cyanide, Cyan Worlds