RGB and CMYK are two color schemes that a beginner needs to know when you want to go out, do your print and come up with full color printing materials. These two color schemes have very specific functions that you need know. Interchanging these functions will make printing your materials a disaster.

RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue. If you would notice, these colors are the primary colors of light and are used to produce the different colors in your computer monitors and television. On the other hand, CMYK stands for Cyan Magenta, Yellow and Black. These colors are used to create colors using inks and are used mainly by digital printers and in color offset printing. Combining these four colors at varying degrees will enable your printer to produce a wide variety of colors that you can use when you design and develop your prints.

Now since the RGB produces colors through the use of light and CMYK produces color using inks, the two color spaces cannot be interchanged. You cannot use the RGB color space when you print and you cannot use CMYK when viewing through your monitor. Doing so will make the color accuracy suffer.

So always remember, RGB is when you use light and CMYK is when you use ink.