Why Printers and Screens Don’t See Color the Same Way
Why do we even have cmyk if rgb exists?
The physical world and light play by completely different rules.
CMYK blending uses what's called subtractive mixing. You start with white paper and every color you add actually removes light. That's why when mixing them together, you get black (the “k”).
Meanwhile, phones, monitors, and tvs all use light which relies on red, green, and blue (RGB) as the core colors. Light uses additive mixing so blending those create white! But… you can’t really make black.
When a screen shows “black,” it’s either using the background of the plate similar to paper in print OR they use very dark purple with the lights turned way down.
Not sure this is interesting to you, but I had to learn all this while making a game and it was super fun.
Thanks for coming to my color spiral.
#design #color #ui #creativetech