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Color Space |
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Each layer may be constrained to a single Color Space: Red-Green-Blue (RGB), Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-black (CMYK), or shades of gray (Gray-Scale). The popup menu at the bottom of the layers drawer is used to inspect or manage the color space for the layer. CMYK color mapping is frequently used when submitting a drawing electronically for printed press use. Professional printers normally require CMYK. In most cases RGB will be the color space used for computer drawing, this is the space rendered on the computer monitor. CMYK will result in different hues and colors, but these slight differences then result in a truer color on high quality printing presses. CMYK for personal use is now much more prevalent with home use photo quality printers. Mapping to CMYK may provide improved appearance when printing drawings to a photo-quality printer on high quality paper.
Computer monitors emit color as red, green, and blue light. For computer monitor drawing, a color is specified by summing of these 3 components. Whereas monitors emit light, inked paper absorbs absorbs light, leaving the remaining components reflected to generate a color. Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (K) pigments serve as the absorbing filters of the printed page. Each subtracts varying degrees of red, green and blue from white light to produce a gamut of spectral colors. Each of these color generating techniques will generate millions of shades and hues of colors - but not all possible colors. Contrary to intuition, the possible colors generated by additive (RGB) and subtractive (CMYK) techniques are not the same. The differences between colors generated by the two techniques are subtle but conversion from RGB to CMYK will produce quite noticeable color shifts on the viewed artwork. The OS X system color picker provides a component slider view that allows colors to be generated with a specific color space. When exporting EPS EPS it is possible to map all colors on a drawing, rather than individual layers, to a particular color space. This mapping is temporary and does not alter the color shades for the master drawing. This may be a more convenient technique to manage color space for printing or submision to electronic pre-press process. |