Hello. It is time to learn the difference between RGB  and CYK in a little bit more depth. Okay? The difference was basically, uh,  digital versus commercial printing. Some of you will know already, some  of you won't be prepared. CYK versus RGB is quite nerdy.

It's important to know though. So let's jump in. Alright, uh, open up the color modes.ai file  from your exercise files. And let's talk about CYK versus IGB. Basically there are two ways of mixing colors. Uh, RGB is used for anything that's used on a screen, okay?

Like you are looking at now your computer screen  that is coming to you, all these colors are coming to you  with a mixture of red, green, and blue. Um, the alternative is CMYK. That's what your physical printer in the real  world uses to print. The difference is that IGB is a bigger color space, mainly  because it has the added benefit of light. Your little electronic screen has the ability  to produce luminance like light shining out of it  so it can enhance colors. It can make these crazy strong pinks and greens down here.

This kind of like nuclear green. You'll know through experience that when you print stuff,  uh, through your printer, if you printed this right now  it would be washed out, right? You'd be like, nah, it doesn't look as cool. It's 'cause in the real world it uh, your bit  of paper does not have light shining out of it  with electrons, okay? It is just a plain old bit of white paper. So there is a compromise in color.

And to get the best colors possible,  they don't use RGB When they're printing they use CMYK,  Siam, magenta, yellow, and black. Okay? So those are the basic differences. When you're working in Illustrator,  you're just gonna be mindful of the purpose of the document. So when I am working on stuff often in my kind  of professional career, everything has dual purpose. It might be printed, but it also will have a lot  of life on um, digital stuff.

So through social media or website, YouTube. So I've gotta take that into account. If you are print only, say you're working at a company  who print, I don't know, magazines or boxes  or packaging, something like that,  you're probably gonna start every document in CMYK. Why would you do that? Because watch this. At the moment, this document is RGB.

How do I know up the top here? Can you see it says color modes. This is an RGB document. Okay? You can switch it  because there's no point working in RGB if you're gonna be  print only because lonely ending disappointment  'cause you'll design this thing, you'll get it signed off  by the client and they'll be like, yeah, I love it. And that'll print off or washed out.

So there's no point starting an IGB if  you're going to print only. So if you are gonna print only,  what you can do is one of two things. When you start a document, go to file, go to new, okay? And when you're starting a document, it doesn't matter  where you click, you can change it under advanced settings. So say you pick your own custom one, we may get a thousand  by a thousand uh points, okay? Down here under advanced options you can say let's  just be CMYK.

It's gonna give you a little warning saying hey,  you picked something that by default an illustrator is set  to RGB and you've changed it to CMYK. Just a little warning that way. Um, it's not gonna break anything, it just is. It's not the default for these kind  of presets they've used here. It doesn't make any difference. Okay?

But let's click create, okay? And up the topic, you see we're in CYK, this one is an IGB. So if I'm gonna print, I'm gonna start this way  and just be very deliberate at the beginning. And when you are maybe new and you're not sure about IGB  and CYK, you just gotta be careful. Like if I go to web, everything in here is going to be IGB. That's the kind of like default for this presets, okay?

But if I gotta print, which is gonna be physically printed  in the real world, watch this letter A four. Can you see down here it's all CMYK. So even if you are like say it's gonna be a PDF  and you're gonna send it to people via email, okay? If you go to a four US letter, okay,  it's gonna default to CMYK. It's never gonna be printed though. So what you might do is use the size here  and you're like, yeah, yeah, I like that size.

Okay, but I want it to be IGB. It's got a warning and say hey, it's not the default  for this print, um, US letter preset, but we're okay  'cause we are professionals, we know what we're doing. We know that this might get printed,  but mostly it's gonna be emailed  so we're just gonna work in IGB  'cause it's a bigger color mode. More colors, more intense colors, alright? The other thing to know about it is you can't round trip it. So let's say you are an IRG B  and you're like okay, this has gotta go to print.

Um, I need it to be CMYK. So I'm gonna go file,  it's gonna be interesting to see what the colors do. So it's go to file, let's go to um, document color mode  and we can go, okay, we're gonna be  CMYK and get ready for the change. Ready looking. You're looking, I'm looking boo wass out. And we know that happens right when we print stuff off,  it just doesn't, it isn't as vibrant, okay?

You're like, okay cool, I'm gonna go back, uh,  file document setup, document color mode  and go to RGB and watch. It won't come back, it'll come back a little bit. Watch it kind of came back. If you can't tell, I'm gonna undo a couple of times  and I'm gonna get the editor  to jump from this one to this one. Go. There you go.

It is quite different, right? So you can't go IG B2C MYK, back to IGB  because even though they're both IGB again it doesn't kind  of like jump back to the original one. It knocks out the colors, it tries to bring it back  so you can't round trip. That's an important point. One last tip or thing I want to mention is, um, printing  CMYK versus IGB. So we've worked out that IGB is digital.

CMYK is physical printers. Um, if I'm sending this to a commercial printer,  so I'm getting this thing printed, uh, I need 10,000 of 'em,  so I'm sending it to my local printer  and they're gonna expect me to send it to them in file. Uh, document color mode, CMYK  and I might have started that way. If it's its only purpose, I'm printing off a flyer. Okay, start CMYK. Might as well work in that color space, know what it is  and the result that I'm gonna get back from the  printer is gonna be the same.

Okay? But now I'm printing it in a different case. I'm printing this Now in this situation at home  or like in an office,  like you've got a big printer down the hallway  that you're connected to, okay? And it's a color printer. Fancy. They actually do better when you send them RGB documents.

You're like, Dan, you just told us CYK is for print. I know early in the days of printing they still use CMYK. Actually my first printer was a DOT metrics. Google that if you haven't heard of one noisy things. But the first color printers just printed CYK  and it then it looked like this came out a where do we go? Document set up.

We went CMYK, it printed like that. So that was fine. You just sent them CMYK. Perfect. New printers though have some special secret  Sauce in their software. Some of them have extra colors.

You might have one of these printers  where it has like a light yellow and a dark yellow  and some other colors like there's like  seven colors in your printer. Um, even if it doesn't, small little home printers, hp,  Epson, whatever they are, they do some weird trickery to try  and attain what, uh, you know, try  and get some of this more RGB style. So if I sent two prints to my printer at home here, okay,  one was RGB and one was CMYK,  the RGB one would look better even though it's still  printing with CMYK,  it's just printers have some magic technology  in them trying. It's hardest to lay down stuff  and mixed colors in a special way where it can try  and achieve RGB some fancy printers, even the home ones  or the home office ones  or commercial ones, they have some special sauce in them  that, um, you know, some extra colors to try  and achieve more RGB like prints. Alright, that was a little bit  waffly, but I hope you get the idea. RGB if you're printing at home or at the office.

But if you're sending it to commercial printer,  they'll won CMW, right? That is it. Uh, I'll see you in the next video.