The Difference Between CMYK & RGB Colors

When our clients have reached out to us for printing, it can be difficult for them to know these differences, especially if they know very little about printing. We specialize in printing brochures, postcards etc. and so this can make it difficult if the proper colors are not used for the right reasons. In this article, we will discuss how important these differences are to know.

Colors For Print

When we are working on a brochure or a smaller printing format, we encourage very high quality images in CMYK at a minimum of 300 dpi for the final sizes. This will create the truest colors and best quality print. That way, the color does not look too blurry to see, it is at a high quality and looks great on the printing product that you are asking for us to print on.

For Large Scale Graphics

We also work on very large graphics and sometimes we will get these graphics with old images. Be careful of this. You can’t always control the quality of those old images, but we will convert them from bitmap, grayscale or from RGB to CMYK. If they are of a higher resolution with these images though, we encourage you to give those to us in CMYK and at as higher resolution as possible to save the quality and color.

For Digital and Web

Since this is in digital format, this is not as bad and you have more leeway. You can provide us images in any color space and we can convert to RGB. However, high quality images with at least 150dpi or 300dpi will hold up better for us to convert to pixels for online.

In conclusion, when it comes to deciding to use RGB vs CMYK, first figure out where you will be showcasing these graphics at. If the location of the graphics will be on a computer monitor, then RGB is the way to go. If the piece will be printed, CMYK is usually the standard and the best option.