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Posts Tagged ‘printing’

Basics of RGB and CMYK for ink jet printing at home

April 3rd, 2010

In the world of home ink jet color printing, there is some confusion concerning CMYK color and RGB color. Many photo enthusiasts don’t realize what kind of color space their digital cameras output and are confused when it comes to printing images off of their home ink jet printers. They hit print and wonder why the printed image looks different from what they see on their monitor.

CMYK is the color description representing printed material, short for the colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Mixing these 4 colors together in different amounts give you the millions of colors that reproduce the colors in printed material. These are actual inks used in printing the images you see in color magazines and books. RGB is the color description for images viewed on your computer monitors, short for Red, Green, and Blue. RGB color is actually light, and mixing different levels of these light colors
creates the millions of colors that come from your computer monitor. All websites and nearly everything you see on your computer monitor is RGB unless the images have been converted to the CMYK color space.

When you print your images on your ink jet printer from your computer, your printer prints the image using CMYK inks. Viewing your image in RGB and then printing it out in CMYK may not yield the results you want. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop will convert your image from RGB to CMYK or vice versa. Some printers require the image to be CMYK before you can print the image correctly. Some printers don’t print the image correctly if the image being printed is in RGB space.

A good reason for printing with a CMYK image is to see your image in CMYK color before printing. When an image is converted to CMYK from RGB, there may be some color changes that are noticeable in the image. The reason for this is because many colors in RGB cannot be reproduced using CMYK inks. That is why it is always a good idea to convert your image to a CMYK color space before printing. You could notice significant color changes to your image, especially in the very intense color areas of your image. Some of these intense color areas may appear less intense or very dull once converted. With photo editing software, you can go in and fix these trouble color areas to your liking.

Many ink jet printers on the market today actually print directly from an RGB color image. And converting the image to CMYK may cause it to print incorrectly. You will need to determine what color space your ink jet printer supports. The packaged software usually will give you a hint regarding color spaces. If there is no option to convert the color space from RGB to CMYK, most likely, the printer will print directly from an RGB color source. Usually, the higher end ink jet printers deal with the CMYK color space as consumer level enthusiasts don’t even know these color spaces exist. New higher end ink jet printers, however, are now printing directly from the RGB color space as there is a wider spectrum of color that can be reproduced in RGB compared to CMYK color.
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Author: admin Categories: Hardware Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

All About Calling Cards

November 29th, 2009

All sorts of businesses, profession or hobbies can benefit from calling cards. Whether you use them as a businessman, real state agent, doctor or any other means you can always be one step ahead of your colleagues or competitors when you have calling cards. Having a calling card is like packing all your business identity, contact information and logo into a wallet sized billboard.

Calling cards can be for corporate or personal use. When they are used for work purposes they are commonly referred to as business cards. Business cards are used for contact information and keeping in touch with your customers. Adding a business card to your marketing strategy is one way of assuring that you maintain communication with your customers. Whenever or wherever they need to contact you, reaching you won’t be too difficult because they know which number to call.

For personal use, traveler’s calling cards can come in handy when you are on the road and need to book hotels, call home or call your office. Having traveler’s calling cards can allow you to make that important call no matter where you are. Home phone cards can also be useful when you are traveling through a countryside where cell phones don’t work. Say for instance your car broke down and you need to call a mechanic, you can’t be always sure to make that call when you do not even know who to call. Your personal card can be very helpful in this occasion. Hence, having a calling card is like an added insurance to you so the next time you hit the road make sure that you never go without your phone card.

You can always design and customize your own calling card. Your choice of design can come in different forms. Among the most common design are raised ink and full color. But you can also choose among foil stamping, embossing and die cut, whichever you think suits your business. Die cut calling cards are always effective in captivating attention because of their unique shapes but they can also be expensive. Nonetheless, they can really make a difference in projecting your overall company image and making a memorable impression.
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Author: admin Categories: Communications Tags: , ,