RGB verses CMYK Colours
For the colour printing of your digital files, you must supply the graphics and images in the optimum colour mode. Many software programs allow 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 is represented on your t.v. or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also make pictures using Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode ought to be in use when taking photos that are to be viewed on the monitor, emails or CD.
All the colours of the light spectrum are formed from the primary colours, but monitors can display only a limited colour range from the spectrum able to be seen. Light is emitted by the monitor, and the ink recognises only a particular wavelength of colours. The three primary colours are combined together to produce white. If the three primary colours are missing, then the light will show as black. By combining a variety of intensities of RGB colours, each combination results in differing colours. A monitor of a television 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.
We can not actually see individual pixels with the naked eye as they are too small. But every pixel is developed by the application of 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 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 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 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 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. This difference results in a great diversity between the print and the monitor display. Additive colour throws 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, resulting in 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 be reflected to the eye, and that results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours is not a strong black. So you have to add black ink to produce the best results for receiving true black. If you would like to have a stronger shade of a colour, you have to add black in CMYK mode.
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 colour onto white paper. Because 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 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 takes more time to dry. Therefore, the total percentage of ink should not be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both 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 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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