Name :Mrs.

Kalyani Mungi

Roll No :10

Division : M.Phil –IT(2007-08)

(Wadia College, Y.C.M.O.U.)

Assignment

Multimedia

Topic : Color Science and RGB & CMYK

Color Models in Images
Some Historical background of color theory evolution

Color theory was originally formulated in terms of three "primary" or "primitive" colors
-- red, yellow and blue (RYB) - because these colors were believed capable of mixing all
other colors. This color mixing behavior had long been known to printers, dyers and
painters, but these trades preferred pure pigments to primary color mixtures, because the
mixtures were too dull (unsaturated).

The RYB primary colors became the foundation of 18th century theories of color vision,
as the fundamental sensory qualities that are blended in the perception of all physical
colors and equally in the physical mixture of pigments or dyes. These theories were
enhanced by 18th-century investigations of a variety of purely psychological color
effects, in particular the contrast between "complementary" or opposing hues that are
produced by color afterimages and in the contrasting shadows in colored light.
Subsequently, German and English scientists established in the late 19th century that
color perception is best described in terms of a different set of primary colors -- red,
green and blue violet (RGB) modeled through the additive mixture of three
monochromatic lights. Subsequent research anchored these primary colors in the
differing responses to light by three types of color receptors or cones in the retina. On
this basis the quantitative description of color mixture developed in the early 20th
century, along with a series of increasingly sophisticated models of color space and color
perception.

Across the same period, industrial chemistry radically expanded the color range of
lightfast synthetic pigments, allowing for substantially improved saturation in color
mixtures of dyes, paints and inks. It also created the dyes and chemical processes
necessary for color photography. As a result three-color printing became aesthetically and
economically feasible in mass printed media, and the artists' color theory was adapted to
primary colors most effective in inks or photographic dyes: cyan, magenta and
yellow(CMY). (In printing, dark colors are supplemented by a black ink, known as the
CMYK system; in both printing and photography, white is provided by the color of the
paper.)
Some Truth from physics :

Fundamental of colours :The radiant energy spectrum contains audio frequencies, radio
frequencies, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet rays, x-rays, and gamma rays.

Visible Light is electromagnetic wave and its color is characterized by the wavelength of
the wave. The figure below show the relative power in each wave lenth interval for a
typical outdoor light on a sunny day.

Color Wavelength(Nanometer)
Violet(Purple) 380-450
Blue 450-490
Green 490-560
Yellow 560-590
Orange 590-630
Red 630-760
The human eye responds to visible light wavelengths between 380 and 760 nanometers.

Human eye works like a camera.. The retina in human eye consists of an array of rods
and three types of cones. The rods come into play when light levels are low thus produce
an image in shades of gray. For higher light levels three type of cones which produce
three types of signal based on their pigments, they are red(R) , Green(G), Blue(B). There
are 6 millions of cones but proportion of R,G and B is 40:20:1 respectively.

Color Models

A color model is an mathematical orderly system for creating a whole range of colors
from a small set of primary colors. There are two types of color models, those that are
subtractive and those that are additive. Additive color models use light to display color
while subtractive models use printing inks. Colors perceived in additive models are the
result of transmitted light. Colors perceived in subtractive models are the result of
reflected light.

Some Important Terms :

Hue - is one of the three main attributes of perceived color, in addition to lightness and
chroma (or colorfulness).

Saturation in color theory - the intensity of a specific hue

Luminance -It describes the amount of light that passes through or is emitted from a
particular area, and falls within a given solid angle. It is often used to characterize
emission or reflection from flat, diffuse surfaces.

Brightness - is an attribute of visual perception in which a source appears to emit or give

give out a given amount of light. In other words, brightness is the perception elicited by
the luminance of a visual target

Color Gamut and Color "Space"

Each color model has is own gamut (range) of colors that can be displayed or printed.
Each color model is limited to only a portion of the visible spectrum. Since a color model
has a particular range of available color or gamut, it is referred to as using a "color
space". An image or vector graphic is said to use either the RGB color space or the
CMYK color space (or the color space of another color model). Some graphic
applications present the user with more than one color model for image editing or
illustration and it is important to choose the right one for the task. The whole point of this
article is to explain the difference between the two color models so you choose the right
one for the job. For you work to display at its best, choosing the right color model is
critical.

The Two Most Common Color Models

There are several established color models used in computer graphics, but the two most
common are the RGB model (Red-Green-Blue) for computer display and the CMYK
model (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-blacK) for printing.

RGB Color Model CMYK Color Model

Additive color model Subtractive color model

For computer displays For printed material

Uses light to display color. Uses ink to display color.

Colors result from transmitted light Colors result from reflected light

Red+Green+Blue=White Cyan+Magenta+Yellow=Black

Notice the centers of the two color charts. In the RGB model, the convergence of the
three primary additive colors produces white. In the CMYK model, the convergence of
the three primary subtractive colors produces black.
In the RGB model notice that the overlapping of additive colors (red, green and blue)
results in subtractive colors (cyan, magenta and yellow). In the CMYK model notice that
the overlapping of subtractive colors (cyan, magenta and yellow) results in additive
colors (red, green and blue).

Also notice that the colors in the RGB model are much brighter than the colors in the
CMYK model. It is possible to attain a much larger percentage of the visible spectrum
with the RGB model. That is because the RGB model uses transmitted light while the
CMYK model uses reflected light. The muted appearance of the CMYK model
demonstrates the limitation of printing inks and the nature of reflected light. The colors in
this chart appear muted because they are displayed within their printable gamut (see
below).

Additive vs. Subtractive Color Models

Additive Color Models Subtractive Color Models

1) Additive color models display color as a 1) Subtractive color models display color
result of light being transmitted (added) the as a result of light being absorbed
total absence of light would be perceived as (subtracted) by the printing inks. As more
black. ink is added, less and less light is reflected.
Where there is a total absence of ink the
resulting light being reflected (from a white
surface) would be perceived as white.
RGB Color Model

The RGB model forms its gamut from the primary additive colors of red, green and blue.
When red, green and blue light is combined it forms white. Computers generally display
RGB using 24-bit color. In the 24-bit RGB color model there are 256 variations for each
of the additive colors of red, green and blue. Therefore there are 16,777,216 possible
colors (256 reds x 256 greens x 256 blues) in the 24-bit RGB color model.

In the RGB color model, colors are represented by varying intensities of red, green and
blue light. The intensity of each of the red, green and blue components are represented on
a scale from 0 to 255 with 0 being the least intensity (no light emitted) to 255 (maximum
intensity). For example in the above RGB chart the magenta color would be R=255 G=0
B=255. Black would be R=0 G=0 B=0 (a total absence of light).

The RGB color model is additive in the sense that the three light beam are added
together, and their light spectra add, wavelength for wavelength, to make the final color's
spectrum.

Zero intensity for each component gives the darkest color (no light, considered the
black), and full intensity of each gives a white; the quality of this white depends on the
nature of the primary light sources, but if they are properly balanced, the result is a
neutral white matching the system'swhite point. When the intensities for all the
components are the same, the result is a shade of gray, darker or lighter depending on the
intensity. When the intensities are different, the result is a colorized hue, more or less
saturated depending on the difference of the strongest and weakest of the intensities of
the primary colors employed.

When one of the components has the strongest intensity, the color is a hue near this
primary color (reddish, greenish, or bluish), and when two components have the same
strongest intensity, then the color is a hue of a secondary color (a shade of cyan, magenta,
or yellow). A secondary color is formed by the sum of two primary colors of equal
intensity: cyan is green+blue, magenta is red+blue, and yellow is red+green. Every
secondary color is the complement of one primary color; when a primary and its
complementary secondary color are added together, the result is white: cyan
complements red, magenta complements green, and yellow complements blue.

To see how different RGB components combine together, here is a selected repertoire of
colors and their respective relative intensities for each of the red, green, and blue
components:

Numeric representations

A typical RGB color selector in graphic software. Every slider ranges from 0 to 255.

A color in the RGB color model is described by indicating how much of each of the red,
green, and blue is included. The color is expressed as an RGB triplet (r,g,b), each
component of which can vary from zero to a defined maximum value. If all the
components are at zero the result is black; if all are at maximum, the result is the brightest
representable white.

These ranges may be quantified in several different ways:

• From 0 to 1, with any fractional value in between. This representation is used in

theoretical analyses, and in systems that use floating point representations.
 • Each color component value can also be written as a percentage, from 0% to
100%.
• In computing, the component values are often stored as integer numbers in the
range 0 to 255, the range that a single 8-bit byte can offer (by encoding 256
distinct values).
• High-end digital image equipment can deal with the integer range 0 to 65,535 for
each primary color, by employing 16 bit words instead of 8-bit bytes.

Notation RGB triplet

Arithmetic (1.0, 0.0, 0.0)
Percentage (100%, 0%, 0%)
Digital 8-bit per channel (255, 0, 0)
Digital 16-bit per channel (65535, 0, 0)

The RGB color model mapped to a cube. The horizontal x-axis as red values increasing
to the left, y-axis as blue increasing to the lower right and the vertical z-axis as green
increasing towards the top. The origin, black, is hidden behind the cube. All colors are
obtained by combining these three colors. This model can be thought as a cube, where 3
non-adjacent and perpendicular corners are R, G and B, like in the following figure:

RGB Color Space. The colors with a P are the primary colors. The dashed line indicates where to
find the grays, going from (0,0,0) to (255,255,255).

As can be seen, RGB is an additive color model, since the combination of green, red and
blue gives white. This is the color model that is most commonly used in computer
graphics, since it matches the way the color is stored in video memory.
CMYK Color Model

CMYK (short for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black), is a subtractive color model,
used in color printing, also used to describe the printing process itself. Though it varies
by print house, press operator, press manufacturer and press run, ink is typically applied
in the order of the abbreviation.

The CMYK model works by partially or entirely masking certain colors on the typically
white background (that is, absorbing particular wavelengths of light). Such a model is
called subtractive because inks “subtract” brightness from white.

The CMYK printing method is also known as "four-color process". All of the colors in
the printable portion of the color spectrum can be achieved by overlapping "tints" of
cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks. A tint is a screen of tiny dots appearing as a
percentage of a solid color. When various tints of the four colors are printed in
overlapping patterns it gives the illusion of continuous tones - like a photograph:

The CMYK model forms its gamut

from the primary subtractive colors
where cyan absorbs only red
(-R+G+B), magenta only green
(+R-G+B), and yellow only blue violet
(+R+G-B). When cyan, magenta and
yellow inks are combined it forms
black - in theory. However, because
of the impurities in ink, when cyan,
magenta and yellow inks are
combined it produces a muddy
brown color. Black ink is added to
this system to compensate for these
impurities.

In the CMYK color model, colors are represented as percentages of cyan, magenta,
yellow and black. For example in the above CMYK chart the red color is composed of
14% cyan, 100% magenta, 99% yellow and 3% black. White would be 0% cyan, 0%
magenta, 0% yellow .It is the substractive counterpart of RGB. If you look at the RGB
color model, you will notice that if you take out the primary colors and the white and
black (which are not colors), you get the CYM triple. RGB and CYM are
complementary; what is a secondary color in RGB is a primary color in CYM.

Due to this, transforming from RGB to CYM and back is very simple:

This color model is used in the printing industry with a variation known as CYMK
(Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black). This is due to the fact that is very difficult (and
expensive) to obtain a pure black combining cyan, yellow and magenta pigments, so a
black pigment is added.

Use RGB For Screen Displays and CMYK For Print

It is important to choose the right color model for the job. The main purpose of the RGB
color model is for the sensing, representation, and display of images in electronic
systems, such as televisions and computers though it has also been used in conventional
photography.

If your images will be printed, then convert them to CMYK and manually bring them into
gamut before printing. If your images are to be displayed on a computer, then make sure
you use RGB color so the full gamut will be available for display. Because both models
can be available at the same time while using an application, it is easy to make a mistake
and choose the wrong palette or set of color swatches.
When In Doubt, Save Images As RGB
The RGB model displays a much larger percentage of the visible spectrum than the
CMYK model and, as a result, has a wider gamut. Once an image has been converted
from RGB to CMYK and brought into printable gamut, the extra RGB data will be lost.

One can retain out-of-gamut areas in CMYK images and leave it to the computer to bring
the colors into gamut at printing time. However this requires the computer to make the
conversion from RGB to CMYK and this doesn't always work out as well as one might
expect. Conversion between color models is not always a good idea.

Because of this fact, you want to scan or shoot images (with a digital camera) using the
appropriate color model for their primary purpose. If the images will be used primarily
for print then use CMYK. If they will be used primarily for screen displays, then use
RGB. You can always convert from RGB to CMYK (or vise-versa) but it is best not to.

If you can afford the time, money and disk space to scan or shoot both versions of an
image where both are needed, then this is the best solution. This is especially true if you
will be using the same images for both printed material (such as a catalog) and the web
(such as an online catalog). A little planning can go a long way here.

But if you are not sure, then I generally recommend saving images in RGB mode and
creating CMYK copies for printed material as needed.

References :

1) wikipedia.com
2) www.sketchpad.net
3) www.studiowebdesign.com
4) ec.cs.vt.edu etc.