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It's Friday again and it's time for another quick tip from PrintPlace.com.
Today we're going to talk about something incredibly important to print design- RGB
vs CMYK.
RGB and CMYK are color modes used in digital design.
RGB, or Red -- Green -- and Blue, is the color of light emitted form your computer screen.
When mixed, these colors can produce a broad range of colors, millions actually, allowing
for very bright, intense hues.
CMYK, or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black- has its origin in the world of printing. Cyan,
magenta, yellow, and black inks are applied one after the other on white paper to produce
a full color image.
For this reason, it is always best to design in the CMYK color space so your printed materials
will match what you see on your computer screen.
So, to put it simply- rgb is for web design, cmyk is for print.
When you work in CMYK, you may notice a color shift between artwork or photos that were
originally produced in RGB. This is because CMYK doesn't have near the color range that
RGB does. Most of the time, the shift is barely noticeable or not a big deal. But sometimes
an intense blue or red will appear off or dull.
If you feel the need to adjust these colors to better match their RGB counterparts, software
such as photoshop or illustrator has great tools for fine-tuning colors. Unfortunately,
because CMYK doesn't have the same range as RGB, the colors will never exactly match.
However, with some experimenting and tweaking you can get fairly close.
That's it for this week. Did you know we have a blog too? Every week we have fantastic articles
on everything from graphic design to running a small business. Follow the link in the description
to check it out.
See you next Friday for more tips from PrintPlace.com.