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What is the difference between RGB and CMYK?



 

When designing your buttons over and over again using professional software like Adobe Photoshop, or our recommend free software Gimp, you will probably come across the terms "CMYK" and "RGB" at some point. People who are not professional artists usually do not know why it matters which mode you create your graphics in. The novice user would ignore what they mean and just create their design in the mode that looks better. You will most likely notice RGB designs look much more crisp and vivid on a computer screen compared to CMYK. There is a reason for that and here is the difference:

RGB - (Red, Green, Blue) are the colors used by your computer screen to produce colors. So designs you create in RGB are best suited for digital displays, like TV's and websites.

CMYK - (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) these are the ink colors used by a printer to print things like photos, broshures, newspapers, and more. So your printer will print using these colors.

When you are actually printing your buttons, your computer will take any file you give it whether in RGB or CMYK, and will interpret it as CMYK. So if your file is in RGB when you go to print, the computer automatically converts it to CMYK and prints it based on CMYK.

The reason why so many professional artists prefer to save images in CMYK is because they can configure their computer display to best match the actual item being printed. When viewing a CMYK image in a graphic editor like Photoshop it can appear to look duller or less vivid than the RGB version, but if you compare a printed photo on a piece of paper to what is shown on the screen the colors will match more closely.

If you want to find out more about RGB or CMYK feel free to research more on google here: https://www.google.com/search?q=cmyk%20vs%20rgb