Ever come across that when you print color or design, the color might not represent what you see on the screen. For instance, when you are looking at the screen, the color variations that you are able to see are created through mixture of lights. However, when you’ve printed it out and looking at the paper, the colors consists of mixture with dark inks. This brings a different saturation of the bright screen color on the screen while dark color on paper ink color. 

Let’s begin to identify the colors that are displayed on screen and printed. As for computer monitors, mobile phones and other digital devices displays 3 basic colors which is red, green and blue (RGB). On the other hand, printer ink composed of 4 colors which is cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK). 

Screen colors are using RGB and Hex.

RGB refers to the specifications of screen colors which R – Red, G – Green, B – Blue. The mixture of all three together at the maximum saturation and you will obtain white.  

Hex is a short term for hexadecimal which is the specification of the screen colors. These codes consists of six numbers and digits. The numbers are used by the computer in interpreting colors.

Print colors are using CMYK and Spot Color.

CMYK refers to the specifications of print colors. C – Cyan, M – Magenta, Y – Yellow, K – Key. Key refer as black as black is the key plate. 

Spot color or Pantone Matching System is the specification of print color. With the modern technology, the colors tend to be very accurate. However, there are some colors which is difficult to be produce by using CMYK.