About colors in printing

RGB

RGB is a color space, the abbreviation of which comes from the first letters of the English names of colors Red, Green and Blue. Why these colors? Only they mixed in the right proportions allow you to get any other color, and in the case of their maximum intensity - white.

The question arises, why just 3 colors and why these can produce the other colors? The answer can be found in the structure of the human eye. Its photosensitive receptors receive waves that the brain reads as one of the primary colors (red, blue or green). The human eye has 3 types of receptors, each of them is responsible for seeing one of the above-mentioned colors. As a result of the lack or damage of some type of photoreceptor, there is a problem with distinguishing colors, e.g. in the case of color blindness, red and green are confused. We already know how we see primary colors, but what about other colors? If the waves activate more than 1 type of receptors, the brain "mixes" the colors and then we see different colors, e.g. waves activating blue and red receptors, the brain will read as a color similar to pink or purple.

We meet the RGB mode using smartphones, laptops or tablets. It is in the RGB mode that the colors in these devices are displayed through tiny, multi-colored diodes. The only exception is black, which cannot be obtained by combining other colors.

Please note that photos that are transferred from the camera's memory to the computer are RGB files and as such are not suitable for professional printing. Only the change to the CMYK format allows them to be printed in high quality.

For more interesting facts about how the human eye works, check out the TED website.

CMYK

The abbreviation CMYK can be defined as the four basic colors of printing inks. The name comes from the first letters of the colors that make up the CMYK palette Cyan (cyan), Magenta (magenta), Yellow (yellow) and Keycolor (key color), which in this case is black. The combination of cyan, magenta and yellow will make black, so why was black added? It turned out that the combination of these three colors, contrary to theory, will not create perfect black, but a dark, brown color. An additional aspect is economic considerations. By printing black from 3 other colors, we will simply lose a lot more product.

CMYK printing consists in applying ink to paper or other material using small dots, saturated with a specific color in 100 percent. They can vary in size and density. Finally, a perfect quality printout is obtained, perfectly reproducing colors.

Pantone

Pantone is a palette of completely homogeneous colors that are prepared in advance and are not created as a result of mixing printing inks when applying the print to the surface, as is the case with the CMYK scale.

When printing in Pantone, we always get the same printout, regardless of which printing house prints it. In a word, it is a perfect color, always the same, which allows you to maintain consistency, e.g. in corporate advertising materials.