When it comes to design, there are two main color profiles to know about: CMYK and RGB.
It might sound like a foreign language, but it’s important to understand what the mean, when you should use one or the other, and how it can play an important role.
Let’s dig in.
CMYK
The acronym CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (or Black). These are the four colors that make up the CMYK color profile.
When designing, you should only be using CMYK if you are designing for print.
You’ll sometimes here CMYK referred to as a 4-Color process. This is the printing method in which all four colors are combined to make up the color output needed.
RGB
Now, RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue. Much like CMYK, this color profile uses just 3 colors to create the outputs needed.
However, RGB should only be used if you’re designing for digital purposes.
This means: anything viewed on a screen (that is NOT printed out).
All of our computer screens are made up of super tiny red, green and blue dots if zoomed in extremely close. Same thing if you think of an LED display — these are all made up of many red, green and blue diodes.
What’s the difference?
There are two different color profiles for print and digital for a reason.
When you’re designing for print, you need your designs to be much higher resolution — because printing on paper is not as fine and detailed as viewing on a screen.
Therefore, you need your CMYK designs to be a minimum of 300dpi (or dots per inch).
With RGB, you can get away with a much lower resolution without sacrificing quality, due to the higher resolution of a digital screen.
In RGB, if designing for the web, you can save images and designs as low as 72ppi (or pixels per inch) and still maintain a true quality image.
Why does this matter in design?
Because the process for how CMYK and RGB are presented and created, they will appear skewed if used improperly.
For example — if you created a design in RGB, and printed it, the color accuracy would be totally incorrect as it should be if it were in CMYK. This can cause confusion — why is my design printing out totally different than what I see on my screen?
Because you’re designing in the wrong color profile!
To learn more about checking and fixing your color profiles in InDesign, give this article a quick read.
As I’ve preached before in many newsletters, brand consistency is key. So utilizing the proper color profile for the right application and end use is imperative to maintaining that brand cohesion.
You need your brand to appear exactly the same on your website as it does on your business card, right?
Branding aside, design is visual communication — imagine your colors get misconstrued and portray the wrong message. Your entire purpose for the design in the first place is ruined, and therefore wasting your time and money into the campaign.
So remember, CMYK = print, RGB = digital.
Thanks for reading!
