RGB verses CMYK Colours
To colour print your digital files, you have to supply the graphics and images in the correct colour mode. Many software programmes will allow you to work with RGB colour or CMYK colour. RGB colours or Red-Green-Blue colours are 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 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, emails or CD.
All 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 by the monitor, and the printing ink recognises only a certain wavelength of colours. All three primary colours are combined to create 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 various colours. A monitor of a television or a computer is made of small units called pixels. Every pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.
We can’t actually see individual pixels with the naked eye as they are so small. Each pixel is created by applying proper values of RGB, as without the proper values of the colour units, you cannot 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 are using 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 colour. This difference develops a large diversity between the print and the monitor display. Additive colour projects light from the monitor, and if more light is projected from a particular pixel, it will be closer to the pure light. In the case of 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 take away the non-essential wavelengths from the light that falls on the ink. The remaining light will return to our eyes, giving the impression of a variety of 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 the deep black. So you must add some black ink to get the best results for printing true black. To receive a darker shade of any colour, you must add black in CMYK mode.
What about the lighter shade of colours? As white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you need to work under the idea that you are printing the colours on a white paper. As small dots of ink are used to print images you have to use the inks in a lower percentage to produce lighter shades so that more white 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%. But when the total percentage does reach 400%, the ink takes more time to dry. And so, the total percentage of ink should not be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both the colour modes have limitations. Images developed using RGB mode can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode because of the brightness of the RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours cannot 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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