RGB verses CMYK Colours

To colour print your digital files, you have to supply the graphics and images in the right colour mode. Many software programs allow you to work on RGB colour or CMYK colour mode. RGB colours or Red-Green-Blue colours are known as the primary colours of the light. This colour combination can be seen on your tv or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also create images using Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode ought to be in use when taking photos that are to be seen on the monitor, emails or CD.

All the colours of the light spectrum are created from primary colours, but monitors can display only limited colour range from the spectrum able to be seen. Light is sent from the monitors, and the ink recognises only specific wavelength of colours. All three primary colours are combined to produce white. If the three primary colours are absent, then the light will show as black. By combining various intensities of RGB colours, each combination produces differing colours. A monitor of a television or a computer is made up of small units called pixels. Every pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.

You cannot see the individual pixels with the naked eye because they are so small. But each pixel is created by applying proper values of RGB, as without the proper values of the colour units, you will not see any image 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 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 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 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 great diversity between the resulting print and the monitor 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 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 mixing a number of colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will be reflected to the eye, and that results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours is not the strong black. You must add black ink to get the best results for printing true black. To produce a stronger variety of any colour, you must add black in CMYK mode.

And how about the lighter shade of colours? As white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you need to work with the hypothesis that you are printing the colours on a white paper. As small dots of inks are used to print images the inks are used in a lower percentage to receive lighter shades so that more white colour is seen among the dots. The values of CMYK colours are calculated with the help of 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 takes more time to dry. And so, 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 can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode due to the brightness of the RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours cannot 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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