RGB verses CMYK Colours

For the colour printing of your digital files, you have to supply the graphics and image in the correct colour mode. Most of the software programs will let 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 colour combination can be seen on your television or computer monitors. The digital cameras and scanners also produce images with Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode ought to be in use while taking photos that need to be seen on a monitor, emails or CD.

All the colours of the light spectrum are created from primary colours, but monitors can display only a limited colour range from the visible spectrum. Light is emitted from the monitor, and the ink recognises only specific wavelength of colours. All three primary colours are combined to produce white. If all three primary colours are missing, then the light will appear as black. By combining various intensities of RGB colours, each mixture produces differing colours. The monitor of a tv or a computer is made up of small units known as pixels. Every pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.

We cannot see individual pixels with the naked eye because they are too small. But each pixel is made by the application of correct values of RGB, as without the proper values of the colour units, you will not see anything displayed 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 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 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 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. This difference creates a large diversity between the resulting print and the screen display. Additive colour throws the 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 take away 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 other colours. If you are combining more 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 isn’t the deep black. You will need to add black ink to get the best results for receiving true black. To get a darker tone of any colour, you need to add black in CMYK mode.

And what about the lighter shade of colours? As white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you have to work under the idea that you are printing colour onto white paper. As small 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 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 if 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 colour modes have their own limitations. Images developed using RGB mode can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode due to the brightness of the RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours cannot be converted into 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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