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Color Mode Types of Graphics,

File Formats & Resolution

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Color is simple, right?

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Color Modes

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• RGB - Red Blue Green Onscreen/monitor

• CMYK - Cyan Magenta Yellow Black High end Print

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RGB •   Assigns an intensity value to each pixel

ranging from 0 (black) to 255 (white) for each of the RGB (red, green, blue) components in a color image.

•   Additive Color •   Light •   Monitor

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RGB

•   With color on the screen, you are mixing light

•   Dark room = no light = black (0) •   Flip the switch = light = white (255) •   Use a prism = separate colors

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RGB

•   For many of us, our first exposure to additive color was in elementary school when we learned about Roy G Biv

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Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet spectrum

Roy G. Biv

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RGB

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Web Safe Colors

•   This was especially important in years past. It isn’t so much now but many web designers still like to play it safe with color.

•   HEX (hexadecimal or base 16)

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RGB in Photoshop In Photoshop, there are functions that are

grayed out (not accessible) in the CMYK mode.

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CMYK

•   Cyan •   Magenta •   Yellow •   Black

The colors of pigment (paint/ink)

Key

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CMYK

•   Do you remember finger painting? •   Mixing all those colors on a paper •   Yellow and blue makes green; red and

yellow equal orange •   All the colors together equal a muddy gray

Subtractive color

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CMYK

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CMYK

•   Printing press plates

A A A A

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CMYK

•   There is pitfall in the conversation of RGB to CMYK: –   Color that is represented by light is by nature

a brighter more vibrant color than color on a piece of paper.

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RGB CMYK

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Graphic Types

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Graphic Types •   Raster

–  Pixel Base –  Mosaic –  Can’t enlarge –  PhotoShop

•   Vector –  Geometry Base –  XY Coordinate –  Small Files –  Can enlarge

infinitely –   Illustrator

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Examples

Raster Vector

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•   Raster

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Format “SAVE AS”

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Formats-Raster •   Print

–  PSD (Native Photoshop Format) RASTER •   Large High Quality

–   Layers –   Transparency

–  TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) RASTER •   Large High Quality

–   Layers –   Transparency

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Web or presentation –  JPEG

(Joint Photographic Experts Group) •  Lossy compression

–  No transparency –  One layer –  Artifacts

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Web or presentation –  PNG (Portable Network Graphics) –  Designed to replace the older and

simpler GIF format •  Transparent background

–  GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) •  Maximum of 256 colors not for

printing-Flat •  Transparent background

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VECTOR Formats

•   .EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) •   PDF (Portable Document Format)

•   .AI (Native Illustrator format)

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Vector - Problems

•   Must have postscript printer. •   Change to PDF if no postscript

printer available

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Resolution

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Resolution

Dependent on the end use ! High end printing – 300 ppi* ! Desktop publishing – 150 ppi* ! Web – 72 ppi*

*pixels per inch; Dots per inch; lines per inch

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Resolution

Always start big –

You can always make big files smaller,

but you can’t make small files bigger.

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RGB

.psd

.ai

350/300ppi

CMYK

.tiff

.ai/.eps

300ppi

RGB

.tiff/.jpg

.pdf

150ppi

RGB

.gif/.png/.jpg

.gif/.png/.jpg

72ppi

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More resources

•   Adobe creative cloud tutorials creative.adobe.com

•   Lynda Tutorials library.ttu.edu/lynda/

•   PhotoXpress photoxpress.com

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