RGB verses CMYK Colours
For the colour printing of your digital files, you need to provide the graphics and images in the correct colour mode. Many software programs allow you to work on RGB colour or CMYK colour. RGB colours or Red-Green-Blue colours are known as the primary colours of the light. This colour combination is represented on your tv or computer monitors. The digital cameras and scanners also make images using Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode should be in use while taking photos that need to be seen on a monitor, emails or CD.
All colours of the light spectrum are formed from primary colours, but monitors can display only limited colour range from the visible spectrum. Light is emitted from the monitors, and the printing ink recognizes only a particular wavelength of colours. All three primary colours are combined to produce white. If all three primary colours are missing, the light will appear as black. By combining a variety of intensities of RGB colours, each mixture results in different colours. A monitor of a television or a computer is made of small units known as pixels. Each pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.
We cannot see individual pixels with the naked eye because they are too tiny. Each pixel is made by the application of proper values of RGB, and without the proper values of the colour units, you will not see any image 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 easiest 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, 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 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 results in a wide diversity between the print and the onscreen display. Additive colour throws 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 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 even more colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will get reflected to your eyes, which results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours is not the deep black. You need to add black ink to get the best results for printing true black. To produce a darker shade of a 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 under the idea that you are printing the colours 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 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 reaches 400%, the ink will take more time to dry. Hence, the total percentage of ink should not be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both of the colour modes have their own limitations. Images resulting using RGB mode can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode due to the brightness of RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can’t 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.
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