CMYK & Vector

We're going to use CMYK and vector only, it's what Tayda needs. Lets cover what that means in the video.

CMYK vs RGB

RGB is a coded color that tells a renderer (like a screen) how much red, green and blue are in that color. The screen will then set the brightness of three LEDs inside a pixel to render that color. It does this on a per-pixel basis. It’s as simple as that.

CMYK is a coded color model that describes a color in terms of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (also called Key). A printer uses these values to determine how much of each ink to apply, using fine dot patterns that visually mix together to produce the final color.

What matters is your document settings, more on that below. When you export an image, or in our case a PDF, the colors will be encoded as RGB or CMYK depending on how the document is set up.

If RGB is sent to a printer, there is a conversion step that attempts to translate those colors into CMYK. This conversion is an approximation and can produce unexpected results if it is not managed correctly. Some colors that look fine on a screen cannot be reproduced exactly in print, which is why export settings matter for predictable output.

Working in CMYK in your app

In any given graphic editor or app (think Affinity, Illustrator etc). You're going to be able to select a color for something. This is going have a pop-up that lets you set both RGB sliders, HEX code something like (#fe14ef) or CMYK sliders.

It seems odd that you can seemingly set both or the same color right? Don't get confused by this. It's simply different ways for you to select the color visually. What matters is your document color space.

In Affinity and Illustrator, this setting lives in your Document Setup. You'd want to set CMYK. This means that when you're setting a color in a color seletor, all the app cares about is the CMYK sliders.

What is a PDF?

A PDF is a file format that can hold both vector (shapes) and raster (images), and it can layer them. Each vector shape is designated a color. Of course we know this, however that color can be tagged "RGB" or "CMYK" and the printer will respond accordingly. An image can be tagged the same way, however the entire image would be tagged RGB or CMYK and this tag lives in the metadata of the image file itself.

Long story short, our PDF is going have three layers, it's going to have vector shapes only, and those shapes are going to have CMYK colors only.

The white layer and the gloss layer is going to have a third type of color, a spot color, but more on that later.

Lastly, in regards to the photo I used to demonstrate raster: Photo by Alberto Restifo on Unsplash