In the communication world, you will certainly hear about Hervé B. He is the king of screens but he never makes a good impression...
A story of mode
There are screens and paper.These two media use different techniques to obtain colors. The important thing to remember is: what you see on the screen is not what you'll have once the document printed, regardless of the method of printing.
The reason? the screens use the RGB mode (red, green, blue), that means the additive synthesis while the printing uses the CMYB mode (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), that means the subtractive synthesis.
So before you start working, you need to know the destination of your document in order to define the right colorimetric mode.
Make a good impression
In printing, we therefore work in CMYB. Contrary to what one might think, subtractive synthesis consists in the addition of the 3 primary colors to obtain all the colors. In order to give more depth to these nuances, we add black. We are talking about quadrichromia.
The four printing colours are cyan (blue), magenta (pink), yellow and black. These four colours, combined with different percentages, allow to obtain the desired shades. For example, 100% yellow added to 50% magenta makes it possible to obtain orange, while 50% cyan mixed with 100% magenta will give a purple.
For some sort of prints, especially those on special media, it will be less expensive to use only one, two (bichrome) or three colors (trichromia). If it's possible to be satisfied with the primary colours, we can also make use of the so-called Pantone colours. Pantone is a brand that combines colors already mixed. It uses pigments and not CMYK to achieve its tints.We then obtain colors difficult or impossible to create in CMYK such as metallic colors, fluos.
You can also choose to add one (or more!) Pantone color in addition to the quadrichromy, which can produce superb effects on your creations.
RGB goes on all screens
While it is easier to see how an RGB color is rendered on a screen while the screen uses RGB mode, remember that not all screens are calibrated the same way. Depending on its brand, a screen will display colors with more or less red, green or blue. Therefore, it is better to test the result of an image on different screens to get an idea of the rendering.
Finally, if colors are important, remember that the shape is just as important, so remember to call on my services!
To see more:
Les Pantone : https://www.pantone.com/eu/fr
L'imprimerie : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprimerie
Le benday ou la couleur en imprimerie : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Points_Benday