RGB verses CMYK Colours
For the colour printing of your digital files, you must supply the graphics and images in the correct 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 colour combination is represented on your t.v. or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also make images with Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode should be used when taking photos that have to be seen 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 ink recognises only a certain wavelength of colours. The three primary colours are combined together to produce white colour. If all three primary colours are absent, then the light will appear as black. By combining various intensities of RGB colours, each combination produces various colours. A monitor of a tv or a computer is made of small units called pixels. Each pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.
You cannot actually see the individual pixels with the naked eye because they are so tiny. Each pixel is created by applying proper values of RGB, and without the proper values of the colour units, you cannot see anything on the monitor. 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 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 a variety of 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 creates 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 an independent 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 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, giving the impression of other colours. If you are mixing a number of colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will get reflected to the eye, which results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours isn’t a deep black. So you will need to add some black ink to produce the best results for receiving true black. To get a darker variety of a colour, you have to add black in CMYK mode.
What about the lighter shade of colours? Because white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you have to work with the hypothesis that you are printing the colours onto white paper. Since tiny dots of inks are used to print images the inks are used in a lower percentage to produce lighter shades so that more white is visible 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%. But when the total percentage reaches 400%, the ink will take more time to dry. And so, the total percentage of the ink shouldn’t be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both colour modes have their own limitations. The images created using RGB mode cannot be converted smoothly into CMYK mode due to the brightness of RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can not be converted 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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