The illusion of colour

Whether it’s CMYK colour or RGB colour, what you’re looking at is an illusion – not true colour. This illusion can be affected by so many different variables: in the case of CMYK (printed colour) these variables can include the colour of the stock, the printer’s inks, the light you’re viewing it under. In the case of RGB (screen) it can be the quality of the screen itself, the glasses you’re wearing, the brightness of the light you’re standing in – and so on.

Whenever you’re dealing with colour reproduction, the trick is to be aware of the illusion and how it works, and then to be as much in control of it as you can be. For example, if you’re printing a CMYK image that contains a big chunk of a corporate colour, then don’t stand it right next to a big chunk of perspex that is exactly matched to the corporate colour. The illusion will simply not work, because the viewer will have a reference for what it should look like standing right beside it.

And colours will always be affected by what they are standing alongside – a green can look either bluer or more yellow, depending solely upon what it is placed next to.

This is one reason why Pantone inks are never really a good idea alongside CMYK print. The saturated, pure colour of the Pantone makes the CMYK illusion look dull, dull, dull by contrast.

In a world where the screen is increasingly dominant, the print colour illusion looks increasingly dull by comparison. But the RGB illusion is still only that – an illusion, and is as open to abuse as any other illusion. We have grown accustomed to super-saturated colours on screens, that really zing out at you. But that doesn’t mean they are more accurate – in fact it’s usually the exact opposite. Colours in real life rarely “glow” out at you in the way they do on a screen, because most light we view is reflected light (like it is in print) rather than emitted light (like it is on a screen).

The trick to success in colour is to understand how the illusion works – because then you are better placed to control what the viewer thinks they are seeing.