RGB verses CMYK Colours
To colour print your digital files, you have to provide the graphics and image in the correct colour mode. Many software programmes will allow 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 combination can be seen on your television or computer monitors. The digital cameras and scanners also produce images using Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode ought to be in use when taking photos that have to be viewed on the monitor, or by emails or CD.
All the colours of the light spectrum are created 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 recognizes only a particular wavelength of colours. The three primary colours are combined together to produce white. If the three primary colours are absent, the light will appear as black. By combining a variety of intensities of RGB colours, each mixture results in various colours. A monitor of a television 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 can’t see individual pixels with the naked eye because they are so small. Each pixel is developed 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 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 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 programme 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 different 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 large diversity between the print and the screen display. Additive colour throws the light from the monitor, and if more light is projected from a particular 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 more colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will be reflected to the eye, which results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours is not the strong black. You must add black ink to produce the best results for receiving true black. To produce a darker shade of any colour, you must add black in CMYK mode.
And what about the lighter shade of colours? Because white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you have to work under the idea that you are printing colour on a white paper. Because small dots of ink are used to print images you have to use the inks in lower percentage to receive 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, if the total percentage reaches 400%, the ink takes more time to dry. And so, the total percentage of ink shouldn’t be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both the colour modes have limitations. The images created using RGB mode can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode because of the brightness of the RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can’t 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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