RGB verses CMYK Colours
To colour print your digital files, you have to supply the graphics and image in the optimum colour mode. Many software programs will let you to work on RGB colour mode or CMYK colour. 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. The digital cameras and scanners also produce images with Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode ought to be in use while taking photos that are to be viewed on a monitor, emails or CD.
All the colours of the light spectrum are formed from primary colours, but monitors can display only limited colour range from the visible spectrum. Light is sent by the monitor, and the printing ink recognises only specific wavelength of colours. All three primary colours are combined together to create white colour. If all three primary colours are absent, the light will show as black. By combining a variety of intensities of RGB colours, each mixture results in various colours. The monitor of a television or a computer consists of small units known as pixels. Each pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.
We can’t see individual pixels with the naked eye because they are so small. But each pixel is developed by applying proper values of RGB, as without the proper values of the colour units, you cannot see anything on the screen. The values of RGB colours are calculated mainly by three methods. The first method is to set them using 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 uses 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 programme 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 different colours. When three additive colours are combined, the combination will produce white colour. But when three subtractive colours are combined, the combination produces black. This difference results in a wide diversity between the print and the monitor display. Additive colour projects the light from the monitor, and if more light is projected from a specific 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 our eyes, providing the impression of other colours. If you are mixing even more colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will get reflected to your eyes, and that results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours isn’t the strong black. So you will need to add black ink to get the best results for receiving true black. If you would like to have a darker variety 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 hypothesis that you are printing colour onto white paper. As 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 colour 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%. However, if the total percentage does reach 400%, the ink will take more time to dry. And so, the total percentage of the ink should not be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both of the colour modes have limitations. The images created using RGB mode cannot be converted smoothly into CMYK mode because of the brightness of the RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can’t be converted 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.
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