RGB verses CMYK Colours

For the colour printing of your digital files, you need to supply the graphics and images in the right colour mode. Most of the software programs allow you to work on RGB colour mode 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 produce pictures using Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode should be in use when taking photos that have to be seen on the monitor, or by 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 spectrum able to be seen. Light is emitted from the monitor, and the printing ink recognises only a particular wavelength of colours. The three primary colours are combined together to produce white. If the three primary colours are absent, the light will appear as black. By combining a variety of intensities of RGB colours, each mixture results in various colours. A monitor of a television or a computer consists of small units known as pixels. Every pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.

We can not see the individual pixels with the naked eye as they are so small. Each pixel is created by applying proper values of RGB, and without the proper values of the colour units, you cannot see any image displayed 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 best 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, 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 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 are using subtractive colours to result in 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 means there is a great diversity between the resulting 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 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, 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 the eye, and that results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours is not a deep black. You must add black ink to produce the best results for receiving true black. To receive a stronger tone of any colour, you need to add black in CMYK mode.

And 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 inks are used to print images the inks are used 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 when the total percentage reaches 400%, the ink will take more time to dry. Hence, the total percentage of ink shouldn’t be more than 300% in CMYK mode.

Both of the colour modes have their own limitations. The images developed using RGB mode cannot be converted smoothly into CMYK mode because of the brightness of the RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can not be translated into 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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