Working together with web and print designs can be tricky and learning how color works can be the key to getting a successful color calibration for both your website and your printed designs such as business cards and brochures. An easy way to remember is anything dealing with the web should be in RGB (red, green, blue) mode and anything dealing with printed material should be in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) mode. But what exactly does that mean?
If you think of it this way it is pretty simple: monitors emit light and paper absorbs light. Computer monitors show color as red, green and blue light at a low-medium resolution usually 72-75 dots per inch. Print production usually requires the four-color process CMYK in high resolution of at least 300 dpi.
By combining the primary colors red, green and blue in equal amounts you will get the secondary colors cyan, magenta, and yellow, with an overlap of all three primary colors giving white. Although all colors can be achieved by merging red, green and blue light, monitors are capable of displaying only a limited range of the visible spectrum.
So when you want to convert your web files to produce artwork for business cards or brochures, changing the format from RGB to CMYK is very important for those printed documents. If you are using Adobe Photoshop select: Menu> Image> Mode> CMYK when you begin a new file. (Don’t forget to select the 300 dpi for resolution.)
Printers who accept RGB files automatically covert the images to CMYK and that can result in faded, dull or inaccurate color representation in the final project. Converting your file to CMYK gives you better control over the final image outcome.
Do you need help calibrating your website or getting printed materials that match your website? Sumy Designs can help. Contact us today for a free estimate.
Susan Sullivan
Susan lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex area with her husband and children. She is an avid distance runner, environmentalist, part-time beekeeper, chicken farmer and amateur photographer.