Colours Explained

What is the difference between CMYK and RGB?

CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Every colour on your printed material is made by mixing these four inks.

RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue. These are the colours of light used on a computer screen. They make up the colours on screen when mixed together. 

So what’s the difference?

RGB is used for viewing colours on a monitor or screen. For example, all the colours on this and any website are in RGB.

CMYK is used for viewing colours in print.

Our presses all use cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks to print your job from the digital artwork you supply. Before uploading your artwork, please make sure it is set up in CMYK. If it isn’t, we’ll convert it for you. However, this can mean your colours look different when printed than they did on your artwork.

Avoid rich black text

Rich black is created from a mix of CMYK inks. When printing, there will always be a slight shift or movement. This can be noticeable in rich black text, so make sure any text is 100% black only. That way there’s no risk of registration errors.

Solid black areas of colour

For solid blacks, you may want a richer shade. Too much ink can harm the quality of your print, so if you want a rich black solid, use the values shown below: 

30% Cyan,
30% Magenta, 
30% Yellow, 
100% Black. 
This will make your blacks richer and keep the total ink coverage within recommended guidelines of our Indigo presses.

White text

Setting a colour to overprint means that it prints over another colour, so do not use this setting for white ink (or 0% in CMYK terms). If you leave this as overprint, it will simply disappear.