RGB verses CMYK Colours
For the colour printing of your digital files, you need to supply the graphics and images in the correct colour mode. Most of the software programs 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 tv or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also make pictures with Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode ought to be used when taking photos that are to be seen on the monitor, or by 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 monitors, and the ink recognizes only a certain wavelength of colours. The three primary colours are combined to create white. If the three primary colours are absent, the light will appear as black. By combining various intensities of RGB colours, each mixture produces various 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.
You can not actually see individual pixels with the naked eye because they are too small. Each pixel is made by the application of correct values of RGB, and without the proper values of the colour units, you cannot 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 best 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 consists of 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 are referring 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 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 colour. This difference creates a wide diversity between the print and the monitor display. Additive colour throws the 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 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 the eye, providing the impression of other colours. If you are mixing several colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will get reflected to your eyes, which results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours isn’t a deep black. So you must add black ink to get the best results for printing true black. To receive a stronger shade of any colour, you have to add black in CMYK mode.
And 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 colour on a white paper. As tiny dots of ink are used to print images you have to use the inks in a lower percentage to receive lighter shades so that more white colour is visible 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%. But when 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 the colour modes have their own limitations. The images resulting using RGB mode cannot be converted smoothly into CMYK mode because of the brightness of the RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can’t 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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