To colour print your digital files, you must supply the graphics and images in the right colour mode. Most of the software programmes 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 combination can be seen on your t.v. or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also produce pictures 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, or by emails or CD.
All the colours of the light spectrum are formed from primary colours, but monitors can display only limited colour range from the visible spectrum. Light is emitted from the monitors, and the printing ink recognises only specific wavelength of colours. All three primary colours are combined to create white. If all three primary colours are absent, the light will appear as black. By combining various intensities of RGB colours, each mixture results in different colours. A monitor of a tv 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’t see individual pixels with the naked eye because they are so small. But each pixel is developed by applying proper values of RGB, and without the proper values of the colour units, you cannot see any image 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 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 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 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 develops a large diversity between the print and the screen display. Additive colour throws the 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 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, giving the impression of a variety of colours. If you are combining even more colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will be reflected to the eye, which results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours isn’t the deep black. You will have to add some black ink to get the best results for printing true black. To produce a stronger tone of any colour, you need to add black in CMYK mode.
What about the lighter shade of colours? As white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you have to work with the hypothesis that you are printing colour on a 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 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 takes more time to dry. And so, the total percentage of ink shouldn’t be more than 300% in CMYK mode.
Both of the colour modes have their own limitations. Images created using RGB mode cannot be converted smoothly into CMYK mode because of the brightness of the RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can’t be translated 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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