RGB verses CMYK Colours
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011For the colour printing of your digital files, you must provide the graphics and images in the optimum colour mode. Many software programs will allow you to work with RGB colour or CMYK colour mode. RGB colours or Red-Green-Blue colours are familiarly known as the primary colours of the light. This combination can be seen on your television or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also produce images using Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode should be in use when taking photos that need to be seen on a monitor, or by emails or CD.
All the colours of the light spectrum are formed from the primary colours, but monitors can display only limited colour range from the spectrum able to be seen. Light is sent from the monitor, and the ink recognizes only a particular wavelength of colours. The three primary colours are combined together to produce white. If the three primary colours are missing, the light will show as black. By combining a variety of intensities of RGB colours, each mixture produces various 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.
We can’t see the individual pixels with the naked eye because they are so tiny. But every pixel is developed by the application of proper values of RGB, and without the proper values of the colour units, you will not see any image displayed on the monitor. 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 simplest 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, with these characters being 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 use 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 develops a large diversity between the print and the screen display. Additive colour throws light from the monitor, and if more light is projected from a particular 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 are subtracting the non-essential wavelengths from the light that falls on the ink. The remaining light will return to our eyes, resulting in the impression of other colours. If you are combining even more colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will get reflected to the eye, and that results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours isn’t the deep black. So you will need to add some black ink to get the best results for receiving true black. To produce a darker variety of a colour, you must add black in CMYK mode.
And how about the lighter shade of colours? Because white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you need to work with the idea that you are printing the colours onto white paper. Because small dots of inks are used to print images the inks are used in a lower percentage to receive lighter shades so that more white is seen among the dots. The values of CMYK colours are calculated with the help of 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%. But when the total percentage does reach 400%, the ink will take more time to dry. Hence, the total percentage of ink shouldn’t be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both the colour modes have their own limitations. Images resulting using RGB mode can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode because of the brightness of RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours cannot be translated to 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.
Looking for Logo Design Brisbane or Graphic Design Brisbane? Bydaughters can help you create a cut-through brand. Bydaughters is also a Brisbane Web Designer of notable talent.
Sphere: Related Content