RGB verses CMYK Colours

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Roger Out

For the colour printing of your digital files, you must provide the graphics and images in the optimum colour mode. Most of the software programs allow you to work with RGB colour or CMYK colour mode. RGB colours or Red-Green-Blue colours are known as the primary colours of the light. This colour combination is represented on your tv or computer monitors. Digital cameras and scanners also make images with Red-Green-Blue colour combinations. Red-Green-Blue colour mode should be in use when taking photos that need to be viewed on a monitor, or by emails or CD.

All the colours of the light spectrum are created from primary colours, but monitors can display only limited colour range from the spectrum able to be seen. Light is emitted from the monitors, and the ink recognises only a particular wavelength of colours. All three primary colours are combined together to create white. If all three primary colours are absent, then the light will appear as black. By combining a variety of intensities of RGB colours, each mixture results in different colours. A monitor of a tv or a computer consists of small units known as pixels. Each pixel contains three units of light, and each unit represents red, green and blue.

You can not actually see individual pixels with the naked eye because they are so small. But each pixel is made by applying proper values of RGB, and without the proper values of the colour units, you cannot see anything displayed on the screen. The values of RGB colours are calculated mainly by three methods. The first method is to set them using different numeric values. The numeric values used for this purpose are the values from 0 to 255, and this is the superior method of the three.

The second method is by using hexadecimal notations. This method is mainly used for HTML and other languages of the computer. These notations follow a logical pattern. The hexadecimal notation consists of six characters, with these characters being divided into three. The first pair represents the red, the second pair green and the third pair as blue. Each pair is represented by a hexadecimal number (0-9) and the letters (A-F). The third method is the percentage in which a certain percentage represents each colour. The program translates these percentages into suitable values ranges from 0-255.

CMYK colours or Cyan-Magenta-Yellow colours are subtractive colours, whereas RGB colours are additive colours. Additive colours refer to light, whereas subtractive colours refer to inks, paint or pigment. CMYK mode is used for printing as all kind of printers use subtractive colours to produce differing colours. When three additive colours are combined, the combination will produce white colour. But when three subtractive colours are combined, the combination produces black. This difference results in a wide diversity between the print and the screen display. Additive colour throws the light from the monitor, and if more light is projected from a particular pixel, it will be closer to the pure light. In the case of printer inks, they will absorb light and reflects only the wavelengths of light that is associated with the colour of the ink.

The inks of the printer take away the non-essential wavelengths from the light that falls on the ink. The remaining light will return to the eye, providing the impression of a variety of colours. If you are mixing several colours, then more light will be absorbed by the ink and a lesser amount of light will get reflected to the eye, and that results in darker colour. Black ink produced by the CMYK colours isn’t a deep black. So you need to add black ink to get the best results for printing true black. To produce a stronger shade of a colour, you must add black in CMYK mode.

And how about the lighter shade of colours? As white ink cannot be created using CMYK colours, you need to work under the idea that you are printing colour onto white paper. Because tiny dots of inks are used to print images the inks are used in a lower percentage to receive lighter shades so that more white is seen among the dots. The values of CMYK colours are calculated using four different percentages. The values of each percentage should be between 0 and 100 so that the total percentage of the ink values can be up to 400%. But when the total percentage reaches 400%, the ink takes more time to dry. Therefore, the total percentage of ink shouldn’t be more than 300% in CMYK mode.

Both the colour modes have limitations. Images developed using RGB mode can’t be converted smoothly into CMYK mode because of the brightness of the RGB colours. Similarly, CMYK colours can’t be converted into RGB mode because the sharp look of RGB colours is missing in CMYK mode online. This is the reason why RGB colours are used in monitors and CMYK colours are used in printers.

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What Country in the World has the Best Quality of Life?

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Roger Out

While the question of which country has the leading quality of life is often approached subjectively, a careful analysis of several factors is important to be able to actuate which one is the foremost objectively speaking. An objective approach would be to rate the arête of life through the Human development index (HDI), which is an annual report, carry by the United Nations Development Fund.

According to the latest human development report by the United Nations, the country that has the large quality of life in terms of HDI is Norway. The HDI goes beyond the GDP (Gross domestic product) to measure how developed a country is. It takes into account three important factors; life expectancy, adult literacy and education, and standard of living measured by purchasing power parity (PPP).

It provides a mixed-up view of the relationship between income and well-being.

Norway ranks number one in the human development index due to the following reasons:
Norway scored a 0.98 in the HDI, with 1.00 being the highest. The country has the highest purchasing aptitude parity.

Norway also has one of the lowest emigration rates. With only 3.9% of its citizens migrating to other countries.

As of the 2010 report, Norway has a total population of 4,898,600, which is pretty low compared to other countries. A good number of their population has high PPP rates.

Public education in the country is free, regardless of nationality. This means that everyone is given access to free education regardless of culture, religion, race and stature in life.

Norway has the second highest GDP per capita next to Luxembourg and the third highest GDP in terms of Purchasing power parity in the world.
The country is well-offin natural resources including; petroleum, minerals, hydropower, marine life and forests.

While the cost of living in Norway is roughly around 30% higher than in the United States and about 25% higher than the United Kingdom, Norway still holds a place as one of the countries with the high-reaching standard of living in the world.

Norway has also been ranked to be the world’s most well-functioning and stable country.

Based on the aforementioned reasons, there is no doubt that Norway is indeed the country that offers the best quality of life in the whole world. With a well-functioning economy, excellent public school system and excellent purchasing power parity, there is no perplexity that Norway would remain on top even for the next years to come.

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Tips to Creating a New Business Logo

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Roger Out

A logo is a central step to building a business. It is the face of your business. And like your face conveys the tone of your business, gestures the service and reveals the professionalism or lack there of.

People spend a lot of money on the formation of their logo and walk away with no artwork files. Then a couple months down the track when they require to put signage on their new building they cannot track the design studio down that formulated the original logo for them and so incur costs to have it recreated. This is unnecessary and may cause complications when trying to replecate the logo exactly as done originally.

We have created some basic tips you for to think about when creating a logo. Hopefully these will help you from experiencing any future difficulties.

Tip 1
First things first – you need to decide if you would like your logo to have an accompanying icon. It is advised that if your service or product name is not in your business name then perhaps an icon will help in portraying a clear message across to your target audience.

An icon can add an extra element to your branding in that you could use the icon on its own on collateral where perhaps you are searching for a more illustrative finish without losing recognition.

A excellent example of this is the well-known and executed Fedex logo.

Tip 2
Colour can be an crucial decision as it not only could change the output costs but can also margin your output use. Think about the end result and what you will be commiting your branding onto in the future. Make sure your designer is aware of this as they should design accordingly.

Tip 3
Ensure you get a back up disk of your logo as a master file and insure that it includes all the files required for the different printing formats.

Creative software updates frequently and some programmes become obsolete. Insure you have a copy of your logo as a PDF – with the text converted to curves.

Tip 4
Using images in your logo is not very easy to manage. For example it is difficult to reverse into black and white. Images also have limitations when it comes to size – they can only be reproduced to a certain size before they start pixilation.

Tip 5
Using gradients in your logo is not recommended. This too can have limitations when it comes to output for ie: gradients are hard to reproduce when embroidering fabrics.

Tip 6
Insure sure the font is legible. Some logos need to be reproduced on small pieces of collateral ie: post stamps. It is important that in this case the text is
legible.

Tip 7
Assure that you receive a copy of your logo in CMYK high resolution 300 dpi (for printing use) and RGB 72 dpi(for web use).

Tip 8
It is important to have a style guide of your logo. It will clearly show you how to use your logo so it looks exactly the same every time it is reproduced. This allows you to keep your corporate image consistent.

Tip 9
Make sure that you get a letter from the design studio declaring that you own the copyright to your logo.

If you follow these tips then not only will you collect a well-designed logo but you will also own the artwork. And when it comes to reproducing your collateral you will be doing it the most cost effective way.

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