The market is flooded with online design tools, popular with small business owners because of their ease of use. They produce artwork which is RGB in format. This format creates coloured pixels from coloured lights – designed to be used on screens. Using these kinds of design tools can help you make graphics to accompany blog posts, update your websites, or introduce a promotion on your social media pages. They’re quick, they are fun to use and allow you to express yourself creatively. I’m all in favour of that!! 

So this RGB thing… it’s less complicated than it initially sounds. Those of you who remember the old tvs with the red, green and blue lines across the screen? That’s exactly what this is! Those lines of coloured light mixed together to display areas of moving pictures on your screen. An RGB colour reference would look something like this one. 255, 227, 81 – a lovely vibrant yellow colour. (The yellow here is made from high values in Red and Green, with less Blue.)

Remember when you mixed paint colours at school? Same principle, here we are mixing inks. When we print, we create artwork in CMYK format – that is, a mix of coloured inks this time in Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (K).  Cyan and yellow go together to make a green shade, for example. A colour reference in CMYK will have four values – the same yellow earlier would be represented as 2, 7, 80, 0. As expected, the yellow ink would be more prominent in this colour mixing. It is depicted with the highest score in this 4-value code.

Can you print RGB designs? Yes, but it might not be the better option. Bear in mind that if you do want to print designs that have originated in screen format (RGB mode), they need to be converted to CMYK colour format. You can do this using software or sometimes a print supplier will do this for you at a charge. Also bear in mind, this can result in a change in hue. It might result in your oranges not as vibrant, or your greens may seem muddy.

(This is the better choice than not converting your artwork… if you send RGB formats to print, you are a braver person than me! Those in the trade commonly complain about this very problem.)

Another consideration is that screen-designs can often be smaller file sizes, compromising with a lower resolution. In most cases, this is undetectable and actually helps with loading speeds on websites, for example. Smaller files display faster. In print, we need that extra resolution – it gives us more definition, colour depth, detail. Whilst it’s possible to make higher definition images smaller with lower resolution, you can’t do it the other way around. If it’s not there to start with, it can’t be magically put back.

Seemingly small problems, but can be a huge pain. If you are expanding your branded materials, and need to colour match.. Beware! Generally, when working on designs that are intended for websites or social media use, stick with RGB. If you’re intending to print your designs, you need CMYK.

Using the right colour mode will distinctly improve the results you see.