The Mystery of CMYK vs RGB
It’s very simple. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. These are ink (pigment) colors. When they are all mixed together they create black (subtractive color model). CMYK relates to printing. RGB stands for red, green and blue. These are colors of light. When all 3 colors are mixed together they create white (additive color model). RGB color is used to display images on television, computers and theatrical lighting.
From a photographer’s POV, the rgb (the native capture format for most digital cameras) to CMYK conversion is the least understood process in all of commercial photography. It sadly is also very critical, and should be completed by folks talented in that Great Black Art.
One can make the most beautiful print at Costco (or equivalent) in rgb, but have the image fall flat on it’s off-colored posterior when printed with CMYK inks.
Color-matching of critical products, like fabrics or fine-art reproduction, should be done within a carefully color-managed workspace, on a color-managed monitor.
Want to hear about color profiles?
Probably not- too boring. Leave it to experts like Susannah, thanks!
[...] over in a linked Illustrator file when the project started out as PMS colors then was switched to CMYK mid-project. Pre-flight will tell you how many channels of color that are in the document but it [...]
[...] graphic is scaled up on a computer screen the pixels can be seen as squares each with their own color and value (dark to light). They cannot be scaled up in size without losing image quality. In a [...]