RGB verses CMYK Colours
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For the colour printing of your digital files, you must provide the graphics and images in the optimum colour mode. Most of the software programmes 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 combination can be seen on your tv or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also create images with Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode should be used while taking photos that are to be viewed on the monitor, emails or CD.
All colours of the light spectrum are created from the primary colours, but monitors can display only limited colour range from the spectrum able to be seen. Light is sent by the monitors, and the ink recognizes only specific wavelength of colours. The three primary colours are combined to produce white. If the three primary colours are missing, the light will show as black. By combining various intensities of RGB colours, each mixture produces differing colours. A monitor of a tv 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 cannot actually see individual pixels with the naked eye as they are so small. Each pixel is created by applying correct values of RGB, and without the proper values of the colour units, you will not see anything 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 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 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 great diversity between the resulting 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. In the case of printer inks, they will 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 our eyes, resulting in the impression of a variety of colours. If you are combining a number of colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will get reflected to your eyes, and that results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours is not a deep black. So you must add black ink to produce the best results for receiving true black. To get a darker variety of any colour, you need to add black in CMYK mode.
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 tiny dots of inks 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 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. Hence, the total percentage of the ink shouldn’t be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both of the colour modes have their own limitations. Images created using RGB mode can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode because of the brightness of RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can not be translated to RGB mode as 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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