RGB verses CMYK Colours
To colour print your digital files, you must provide the graphics and images in the optimum colour mode. Most of the software programs will let you to work on 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 can be seen on your tv or computer monitors. The digital cameras and scanners also create images using Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode should be in use while taking photos that are to be viewed on the monitor, or by emails or CD.
All colours of the light spectrum are created from the primary colours, but monitors can display only a limited colour range from the visible spectrum. Light is emitted by the monitor, and the printing ink recognizes only a certain wavelength of colours. The three primary colours are combined to create white colour. If all three primary colours are missing, then the light will appear as black. By combining a variety of intensities of RGB colours, each mixture results in various colours. The monitor of a tv 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.
You can not actually see individual pixels with the naked eye as they are so tiny. Each pixel is made by applying proper values of RGB, as without the proper values of the colour units, you will not see anything 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 best method of the three.
The second method is the use of 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 are referring 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 results in a wide diversity between the resulting print and the onscreen 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. In the case of printer inks, they absorb light and reflects only the wavelengths of light that is associated 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 the eye, resulting in the impression of a variety of colours. If you are combining several 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 printing true black. If you would like to have a stronger tone of any colour, you have to add black in CMYK mode.
And how about the lighter shade of colours? As white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you have to work under the hypothesis that you are printing colour onto white paper. Since small dots of inks are used to print images you have to use the inks in 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, when the total percentage reaches 400%, the ink takes more time to dry. Hence, the total percentage of ink shouldn’t be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both of the colour modes have their own limitations. The images developed using RGB mode can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode because of the brightness of RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can not 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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