CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, black. RGB stands for red,
green, blue.
Your computer tends to use the RGB color model for what you see on the
screen. RGB is called an additive color space, which means new colors
are made by selectively adding combinations of red green and blue
together. Black is made by adding all three colors together. White is
made by removing all three colors. Web designers like this color model
a lot because it uses what can be shown on the screen.
Your printer tends to use the CMYK color model for what you see on the
paper. CMYK is called a subtractive color space, which means that new
colors are made by selectively subtracting from the CMY colors. The
black is thrown in as an extra because black is very hard to make this
way. so they cheat and have a special black cartridge and then just
siphon off of this to make the dark colors. The newest photo printers
have an extra black cartridge called "photo black" to make the dark
tones in a photo look realistic. Graphic Designers "like" this color
model a lot, because they tend to design with what they know will print
well. If you have ever heard of the name Pantone, then you have heard
of CMYK colors but didn't know it. (As a side note, Pantone is busy
copyrighting just about every conceivable CMYK color).
There are extensions to these two basic color spaces, but all they do
is give you a few more colors. To go from the screen to the printer
(with varying degrees of success), RGB colors are converted into CMYK
colors. The "(with varying degrees of success)" is added in as this is
very tricky to do, the colors don't always directly convert, there are
arguably more RGB colors than there are CMYK colors. So some graphics
look great on the screen and look like garbage coming off of a $10,000
printer!
Jerry
p.s. HSL is the color model called Hue, Saturation, and Lightness, but
it mainly works on the screen. It too has to be converted before being
printed. Photographers like this color model a lot as it is close in
the idea of what they do in the darkroom with color corrections.
On Friday, January 3, 2003, at 06:14 PM, Mledie at aol.com wrote:
> Jerry, what is CMYK and RGB ? I am intrigued what all is involved
> in this
> cartridge business. When I get my new (old) printer connected, what
> will I
> be in for? Marta
>
>
> | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will
> | be January 28. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
>
>
>
| The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will
| be January 28. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
