Color Doesn’t Exist, Understanding + Design

Key Takeaways

• COLOR VARIES: The ways in which color can vary are many and vast. Don’t expect 100% this-to-that conversion.
• DON’T STRESS: If something looks odd on someone else’s machine or phone, don’t freak out too much.
• BE RESOURCEFUL: Use the conversion provided as much as possible, but remember the true north to aim at if what you perceive.

Lecture Outline:

Basic Color Modes:

• CMYK:
• Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black (Key).
• Used for printed materials
• Called “Process Color” or “4-Color Process”
• Subtractive Color Process—the more you add you get black

RGB:

• Red, Green, Blue
• Used for screens
• How your eye perceives light via short, medium, long length cones in your eyes
• Additive Color Process—the more you add you get white

Pantone / PMS:

• Pantone is a company which provides this system, sometimes called PMS
• Used for printed materials
• The letter or book used specifies the type of substrate it’s intended for. C = Coated Paper, U = Uncoated Paper, TPX = Textiles, etc.
• Can be more expensive to print

Color Can Vary Because Of:

• What you print it on
• Whether it’s ink on paper (subtractive)
• Coated or Uncoated paper
• Whether the color is accurately calibrated or not
• or Light on screen (additive)
• What type of device (age, size, etc)
• What Gamma settings (Mac OS / Windows / Etc.)
• What color profiles you use (honor or not)
• What lighting conditions it’s viewed under
• The eyes of the person viewing it (color blindness, etc)
• And so on…

Color Doesn’t Actually Exist

• Color is a wavelength of light, it’s not a touchable thing
• A standard chromaticity diagram can be abstracted to the color wheel we’re used to
• Color blind people have a different chromaticity diagram than everyone else

Color Gamut:

• A “gamut” is just how many colors something can reproduce.
• So every human’s eye can see a portion of the visible spectrum
• Every device and printing method has a gamut of what colors it can reproduce
• RGB has the largest gamut, sRGB color mode is the industry standard. 16.7 million colors
• CMYK has a much more limited gamut
• Pantones also have a limited gamut compared to RGB

Issues with CMYK

• You view and prepare it on an RGB monitor, so it will never look as it does on screen

Issues with RGB:

• Every device has it’s own settings for brightness, color, and gamut, and gamma in terms of how it will reproduce an image
• Once an image leaves your screen, you have very little control over how it shows up for someone else.
• RGB probably has the largest amount of variation in terms of final reproduction due to variance in device type

Issues with Pantones:

• They show up different on different types of paper
• Pantone books fade over time, chips can vary

The Environment

• The environment you’re in affects how you perceive color
• Color-constancy with your brain can shift colors
• Every “color issue” with a client is more of a customer service hurdle than a technical one