It is commonly used as a transparency placeholder for a reason - nobody wants to actually see it.
My memory from my days in television was that magenta was used to represent transparency because it was the opposite of chroma green, and was easy to generate electronically. That's why it ended up being in one of the palettes for the primitive-by-today's-standards CGA adapter in the early IBM PC's.
Chroma green, magenta, and superblack were three "magic colors" that made TV production work in the pre-digital age. Sadly, there is no wikipedia entry for superblack even though everyone saw it all the time, and few understood its utility.
My memory from my days in television was that magenta was used to represent transparency because it was the opposite of chroma green, and was easy to generate electronically. That's why it ended up being in one of the palettes for the primitive-by-today's-standards CGA adapter in the early IBM PC's.
Chroma green, magenta, and superblack were three "magic colors" that made TV production work in the pre-digital age. Sadly, there is no wikipedia entry for superblack even though everyone saw it all the time, and few understood its utility.