Design for the destination
Know whether the final piece is printed, displayed on screen or used in both places before approving critical colours.
The essential difference
RGB emits light. CMYK places ink on a surface.
RGB combines red, green and blue light on phones, monitors and cameras. CMYK combines cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks or toners to reproduce colour on paper and other printable materials.
Because the systems create colour differently, some vivid RGB colours sit outside the reproducible CMYK range. Conversion maps those colours to printable alternatives; it does not preserve every screen colour exactly.
| Colour system | How colour is created | Best used for | Production note |
|---|---|---|---|
| RGB | Red, green and blue light | Websites, screens, photography capture and digital displays | Offers many luminous colours that may shift when converted for process printing. |
| CMYK | Cyan, magenta, yellow and black process inks or toners | Most full-colour commercial printing | Results depend on paper, ink limits, profiles, process and finishing. |
| Pantone / spot colour | A specified premixed ink or matched production reference | Critical brand colours and selected speciality work | Can improve consistency, but availability and cost depend on the job and printing method. |
| Grayscale / black | Black channel or controlled neutral values | Black-only documents, text and monochrome imagery | Small black text and large black areas may require different colour builds. |
A safer colour workflow
Move from screen to print deliberately.
Check the colour space
Review linked images, placed artwork and export settings—not only the document colour mode.
Protect brand colours
Use agreed CMYK values or a spot-colour reference where consistency matters across different materials.
Proof the important work
For colour-sensitive jobs, approve a suitable physical proof or production sample rather than relying on a screen alone.
Screen brightness is not print brightness.A backlit display can show luminous blues, greens and oranges that process inks cannot reproduce with the same intensity on paper.