RGB verses CMYK Colours
For the colour printing of your digital files, you have to provide the graphics and image in the right colour mode. Many software programs allow you to work with RGB colour mode or CMYK colour. RGB colours or Red-Green-Blue colours are known as the primary colours of the light. This colour combination is represented on your tv or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also produce pictures with Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode ought to be used while taking photos that have to be viewed on the monitor, emails or CD.
All colours of the light spectrum are formed from primary colours, but monitors can display only a limited colour range from the spectrum able to be seen. Light is sent by the monitor, and the ink recognizes only specific wavelength of colours. All three primary colours are combined together to create white colour. If all three primary colours are missing, then the light will show as black. By combining a variety of intensities of RGB colours, each mixture produces different colours. A monitor of a television or a computer is made up of small units known as pixels. Each pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.
You can not actually see the individual pixels with the naked eye because they are so small. But every pixel is made by applying proper values of RGB, and without the proper values of the colour units, you will not see anything on the monitor. 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 simplest 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 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 use 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. This difference creates a wide diversity between the resulting print and the onscreen 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 will absorb light and reflects only the wavelengths of light that is linked 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 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 get reflected to the eye, which results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours isn’t a strong black. So you must add black ink to get the best results for receiving true black. If you would like to have a stronger variety of a 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 need to work under the idea that you are printing colour onto white paper. Because tiny dots of ink are used to print images the inks are used in lower percentage to receive lighter shades so that more white 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%. However, when the total percentage reaches 400%, the ink takes more time to dry. Therefore, the total percentage of ink should not be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both the colour modes have their own limitations. The images developed using RGB mode can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode due to the brightness of the 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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