RGB verses CMYK Colours
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To colour print your digital files, you need to provide the graphics and images in the right colour mode. Many software programmes will let you to work with RGB colour or CMYK colour. RGB colours or Red-Green-Blue colours are familiarly known as the primary colours of the light. This colour combination can be seen on your television or computer monitors. The digital cameras and scanners also make pictures using Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode should be used while taking photos that are to be viewed on a monitor, emails or CD.
All colours of the light spectrum are formed from the primary colours, but monitors can display only limited colour range from the visible spectrum. Light is sent from the monitors, and the ink recognises only a particular wavelength of colours. All three primary colours are combined to create white colour. If all three primary colours are absent, the light will show as black. By combining a variety of intensities of RGB colours, each mixture results in different colours. A monitor of a tv or a computer consists of small units known as pixels. Each pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.
You can not see the individual pixels with the naked eye because they are too small. But every pixel is made by the application of proper values of RGB, as without the proper values of the colour units, you cannot see any image displayed on the screen. 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 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, 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 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 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 results in a wide diversity between the resulting print and the monitor display. Additive colour projects the 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 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 a variety of colours. If you are combining more 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 is not a deep black. So you have to add some black ink to produce the best results for receiving true black. To get a stronger tone of a colour, you have to add black in CMYK mode.
And how about the lighter shade of colours? As white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you have to work with the idea that you are printing the colours on a white paper. Because 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 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, if the total percentage reaches 400%, the ink takes more time to dry. Therefore, the total percentage of 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 because of the brightness of the RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can not 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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