Aqua is a tone of the color cyan. It is identical to the color electric cyan, one of the three secondary colors (subtractive primary colors) of the HSV color wheel, along with magenta and yellow. It is precisely halfway between green and blue on the color wheel. It should not be confused with the color process cyan used in printing, which is a deeper tone of cyan.
In traditional print media, "aqua" is short for aquamarine, a distinct color from aqua. The words "aqua" and "cyan" are used interchangeably in computer graphics, and especially web design, to refer to the subtractive primary color "electric cyan". Traditionally that color, defined as #00FFFF in hex, or (0,255,255) in RGB, is called "cyan", but X11 color names introduced the alternative name "aqua". Later, W3C popularized the name by using it in the named color palette of HTML 3.2 specifications.
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