The spectrum of colours that may be displayed on a screen or produced by a printing equipment is known as the “colour gamut.” The range of colours that may be exhibited expands as the gamut does. RedGreenBlue is an additive colour scheme that is used in monitors and other devices to reproduce a broad variety of hues. The same goes for print devices, which employ a subtractive CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) colour scheme with a limited colour gamut. This is frequently the cause of differences in how a printed picture and a digital original appear.
Additive Vs Subtractive
A succession of primary coloured red, green, and blue light-emitting dots are used by the screen of an additive colour display, such as a TV or monitor, to generate an image. They may be mixed in a variety of ways and intensities to produce a wide spectrum of colours.
In a subtractive colour scheme, such as on a printed picture, you use the white of the page itself to filter/subtract out certain colours using a mixture of CMYK dots printed on its surface rather than producing colours by combining RGB light. A subtractive system’s colour range is often less than an RGB system’s because subtractive systems cannot produce new colours.
How does this affect my photo prints?
What does this mean for the prints of your photos, then? Well, a smaller gamut would often result in a loss of richness and brightness in some colours of your image, particularly for colours at the extreme ends of the spectrum like brilliant reds and oranges or purples with a neon look.
High-end photo printer producers like Canon and Epson address the gamut issue by expanding the device’s internal colour palette. You will also find inks like red, orange, vivid magenta, photo cyan, photo magenta, and blues, which are designed to expand the machine’s colour range and enable you to more accurately reproduce the colours of your digital originals. These inks are in addition to the standard CMYK colours found in all devices.
Photographic printers frequently require numerous black and grey ink cartridges as well as more colour inks than usual. Despite the fact that they have no impact on the palette of colours a machine can create, they do have an impact on the quality of the dark shades it can produce. For black and white photo prints, several blacks and greys offer hues that merge much more gradually while keeping quality.
