RGB verses CMYK Colours
To colour print your digital files, you must provide the graphics and image in the correct colour mode. Many software programmes allow you to work with RGB colour or CMYK colour mode. RGB colours or Red-Green-Blue colours are familiarly known as the primary colours of the light. This colour combination is represented on your tv or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also create pictures using Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode ought to be in use when taking photos that are to be viewed on a monitor, emails or CD.
All colours of the light spectrum are created from the primary colours, but monitors can display only a limited colour range from the visible spectrum. Light is sent by the monitors, and the printing ink recognizes only a particular wavelength of colours. The three primary colours are combined to produce white. If the three primary colours are absent, the light will show as black. By combining various intensities of RGB colours, each combination results in various colours. A monitor of a tv or a computer is made of small units known as pixels. Every pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.
We cannot see the individual pixels with the naked eye because they are so tiny. But every pixel is made by the application of correct values of RGB, as without the proper values of the colour units, you will not see any image 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 superior 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 use subtractive colours to produce 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 creates a wide diversity between the print and the screen 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. 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 take away 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 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, which results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours is not a deep black. You will have to add some black ink to get the best results for receiving true black. If you would like to have a stronger shade of any colour, you have to add black in CMYK mode.
What about the lighter shade of colours? Because white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you need to work under the hypothesis that you are printing colour onto white paper. Because small dots of ink are used to print images the inks are used in 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 does reach 400%, the ink will take 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 created using RGB mode cannot 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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