Thursday, July 18, 2013

Color me what..... RGB vs CYMK

Today class, we are talking about COLOR.. easy right.. you have primary colors, which are RED, BLUE, YELLOW.  From here you can mix your primary colors to get your secondary colors, that would be violet, green, orange. Now you only really need primary colors to make any color you choose. With in theory! You see these colors make the color spectrum. But when you go to print and to web graphics its a little different. You have RGB and CMYK color combinations to play within. Now RGB color is used for computers, TV's and other items that have a screen on them. RGB is red, green and blue light. As for CYMK, this is for printed materials, and printing applications. CYMK is cyan, yellow, magenta, and black ink. (  I know i said earlier that red, blue, yellow can be combined to make any color so why black ink? If you actually mix the colors together you get more of a milky dark brown. So they mix a black ink to use for black and to help in darker colors. )  The biggest problem with this is it is hard to carry colors back and forth through RGB and CYMK color schemes. With RGB, when you mix this colors together... you get white.  One color scheme is the presence of light, the other the absence of light.

That is why is is hard sometimes to take a vibrant color on a computer screen and print that exact color on a printed material. There are ways to get them close, but they will never be the same. That is why its a good idea to have one person/company to help keep your colors correct. The more you have different companies "play" with your images, the more chances there is about  having color issues and even altered image issues. If you don't use a person/ one company to do your imaging and branding, then make sure the company you use is qualified in their work, and they should be able to keep you looking good.

Here is a link to a article on the web ( one of many) that gives you more in depth about color in RGB and CYMK. Enjoy the read. ( Click Here )