RGB verses CMYK Colours
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011For the colour printing of your digital files, you must supply the graphics and images in the optimum colour mode. Most of the software programs let you to work with RGB colour or CMYK colour mode. RGB colours or Red-Green-Blue colours are known as the primary colours of the light. This colour combination is represented on your television or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also make pictures with Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode should be in use while taking photos that are to be seen on the monitor, or by emails or CD.
All the colours of the light spectrum are created from primary colours, but monitors can display only limited colour range from the visible spectrum. Light is emitted by the monitor, and the ink recognises only specific wavelength of colours. All three primary colours are combined to produce white. If the three primary colours are missing, then the light will show as black. By combining various intensities of RGB colours, each mixture produces different colours. The monitor of a tv or a computer is made up of small units known as pixels. Every pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.
You cannot actually see individual pixels with the naked eye as they are too tiny. But every pixel is made by applying correct values of RGB, and without the proper values of the colour units, you cannot see any image on the screen. The values of RGB colours are calculated mainly by three methods. The first method is to set them with the help of different numeric values. The numeric values used for this purpose are the values from 0 to 255, and this is the best method of the three.
The second method is by using hexadecimal notations. This method is mainly used for HTML and other languages of the computer. These notations follow a logical pattern. The hexadecimal notation consists of six characters, and these characters are divided into three. The first pair represents the red, the second pair green and the third pair as blue. Each pair is represented by a hexadecimal number (0-9) and the letters (A-F). The third method is the percentage in which a certain percentage represents each colour. The program translates these percentages into suitable values ranges from 0-255.
CMYK colours or Cyan-Magenta-Yellow colours are subtractive colours, whereas RGB colours are additive colours. Additive colours refer to light, whereas subtractive colours refer to inks, paint or pigment. CMYK mode is used for printing as all kind of printers are using subtractive colours to produce differing colours. When three additive colours are combined, the combination will produce white colour. But when three subtractive colours are combined, the combination produces black colour. This difference means there is a wide diversity between the resulting print and the monitor display. Additive colour projects light from the monitor, and if more light is projected from an independent pixel, it will be closer to the pure light. Regarding printer inks, they absorb light and reflects only the wavelengths of light that is linked with the colour of the ink.
The inks of the printer take away the non-essential wavelengths from the light that falls on the ink. The remaining light will return to the eye, providing the impression of other colours. If you are combining more colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will be reflected to your eyes, which results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours is not the deep black. You have to add black ink to produce the best results for printing true black. To receive a stronger tone of any colour, you must add black in CMYK mode.
And how about the lighter shade of colours? As white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you need to work under the idea that you are printing colour onto white paper. Because small dots of ink are used to print images the inks are used in a lower percentage to produce lighter shades so that more white is seen among the dots. The values of CMYK colours are calculated using four different percentages. The values of each percentage should be between 0 and 100 so that the total percentage of the ink values can be up to 400%. However, when the total percentage reaches 400%, the ink takes more time to dry. And so, the total percentage of the ink should not be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both the colour modes have their own limitations. The images developed using RGB mode cannot be converted smoothly into CMYK mode because of the brightness of RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can’t be converted into RGB mode because the sharp look of RGB colours is missing in CMYK mode online. This is the reason why RGB colours are used in monitors and CMYK colours are used in printers.
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