Original subtitles

Hi there. In this video,

we're going to talk about RGB versus CMYK.

You might have come across this, you might not have.

It's kind of a cinch, I guess,

to understand the basics,

so let's cover them quickly.

So, when you setting up a new document,

you're given the option to pick RGB or CMYK.

Okay. So, if I go to print and pick one of the defaults,

you might not have this viewable,

you might have to click Advanced Options,

but by default, it's going to go to CMYK.

If I go to something like web, or film,

or pretty much any of the other ones and I pick one of these,

it's going to default to RGB.

So, RGB is a color,

it's just red, green and blue,

and basically those are the colors used for screens to display color.

So, my laptop in front of me right now uses a mixture of red,

green and blue to generate the colors that we see.

But we know that if we use our printer,

the one on our desk, we have a look,

it's going to use cyan,

magenta, yellow and black,

and that's CMYK that uses those colors to mix together.

The big difference is RGB has like an end secret ingredient.

It has light, luminance,

it has light coming out of the screen that

allows it to kind of generate more colors than CMYK can.

You probably have tried it before.

You've printed an image,

it looks great on screen,

but it print's a bit washed out,

because your screen has light coming out of it

whereas the paper from your printer has no light.

So, it's a different kind of color mode.

RGB has a bigger gamma of color,

CMYK has a smaller one.

Now, why would you use both?

Basically, RGB as a rule is probably your best one to use for everything at the moment,

especially if you're going to use something that's going out via email or via a website.

Even if it's going to print,

it's probably going to be dual use,

so many things are these days,

you're probably going to want to use it for

both your website to be downloaded and to be going to commercial print.

If it's something you're creating like a postcard that's going to commercial print only,

you might want to consider using CMYK.

But in that case as well,

in my experience that most modern printers will expect RGB,

they've got some really cool reps and ways of skimming the most out of the CMYK.

So, often, just use RGB if you're unsure.

If you're a little bit more professional,

you probably know this already then,

and you can use CMYK.

Now, let's have a little look at the differences between the two.

Now, let's go to File, Open,

and in here there's one called colors.ai. Open it up.

So, this is an RGB document. How do I know?

The easiest way is up in the tab here,

you can see it's RGB.

Okay? The way to change it,

let's say I want to be in CMYK,

I can go to file, this one called Document Color Mode.

You can see I've ticked RGB.

Watch what happens when I change it to CMYK. Watch the colors.

Watching the colors? They wash out quite a bit.

It's giving you a representation now of what it would look like as CMYK.

Now, if you're only going to commercial print and they have asked for CMYK,

there's no point being an RGB.

Okay. But if you're like me,

I often dual-use things,

I'll use of all sorts of things.

I'll start in RGB and often just send it to the printer in RGB,

and depending on your printer,

they've got really good ways of converting it to

CMYK to try and restore some of those colors.

All right. So, I hope that's giving you a little bit of understanding of CMYK and RGB.

So, my basic skim rules are,

use RGB, and send it around, it works fine.

It works on digital and works good for printing to local printers,

even like my office printer,

accepts an RGB better and process it

nicer than if I send it a proper CMYK official version.

But you need to know the difference between the two.

Some printers will demand CMYK,

and that's fine, that's the way they work.

Okay. So, just make sure you working it in CMYK.

You might have to have two versions of the document,

one in RGB for digital,

and another one in CMYK.

All right. Let's get into some more exciting stuff about color.

Let's get into the next video.