RGB verses CMYK Colours
To colour print your digital files, you must supply the graphics and image in the correct colour mode. Most of the software programs will allow you to work with RGB colour or CMYK colour. RGB colours or Red-Green-Blue colours are familiarly known as the primary colours of the light. This combination is represented on your television or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also create images with Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode should be used while taking photos that are to be seen on a monitor, or by emails or CD.
All the colours of the light spectrum are formed from primary colours, but monitors can display only a limited colour range from the visible spectrum. Light is emitted from the monitor, and the ink recognises only a certain wavelength of colours. The three primary colours are combined together to create white colour. If all three primary colours are missing, then the light will appear as black. By combining various intensities of RGB colours, each combination results in differing colours. The monitor of a tv or a computer consists of small units called pixels. Each pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.
You cannot actually see individual pixels with the naked eye because they are so small. But each pixel is created by the application of proper values of RGB, as without the proper values of the colour units, you will not see any image displayed 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 simplest 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, 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 use subtractive colours to result in 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. This difference results in a wide diversity between the print and the monitor display. Additive colour projects 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 will 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 a variety of 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 the eye, and that results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours isn’t a strong black. You have to add black ink to get the best results for printing true black. To produce a stronger tone of any colour, you have to add black in CMYK mode.
And what about the lighter shade of colours? As white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you have to work with the hypothesis that you are printing colour onto white paper. Since tiny dots of inks are used to print images the inks are used in a lower percentage to receive lighter shades so that more white colour 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 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 their own limitations. The images created using RGB mode can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode due to the brightness of the RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can’t be translated into RGB mode as 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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