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Matching Colors displayed on your monitor with printouts
Colors are displayed on a video monitor by mixing the colours red, green, and blue (the three primary
colors of visible light) in the amounts required to produce any given color. This sort of display
technology is called RGB. In the RGB method, the more intense the colors you mix, the brighter the
color becomes.
Printing technologies, on the other hand, employ the three primary colors cyan, magenta, and yellow,
plus black (or K) to produce color effects. This method is called CMYK. In the CMYK method, the
more of a given color you add to a mixture of colors, the darker the resultant color becomes.
As these paragraphs illustrate, the methods used to produce color in displays and printers are
completely different. Other factors that can affect the perception of color are the quality of paper, type
of print media, and differences in the source of light in use when viewing the colors. For these
reasons, it is impossible to avoid some differences in the perceived color of a document or image
viewed on a monitor, and the same image in printed form. In order to achieve a printed result which
looks like the image displayed on the screen of a monitor, you must first make the appropriate settings
to both the software application and the printer.
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