Online color building tool: Adobe Color CC
Which color profile you chose for your project depends on how what you’re creating will be used.
CMYK | Print
CMYK Stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black) the four inks used in most printing processes. Digital work that will be printed should be set up in CMYK.
RGB | Digital
The colors Red, Green and Blue are combined with the backlight of the computer monitor to produce specific colors. Without the light of the display, RGB colors render differently which is why printing an RGB image produces different results than printing a CMYK image.
SPOT | Fancy print
Spot Color is used when exact color matching is crucial or when printing with specialty inks like metallic or neon inks. Using spot colors is a lot like buying paint at home depot—you chose a color swatch and hand it to the mix master at the counter who then uses that swatch’s recipe to mix your paint. To pick your spot color swatch, you need a Pantone Guide Booklet that shows you the swatch's corresponding PMS code to give to your printer Example: PANTONE 115C is a bright yellow. Here’s a PANTONE video workflow video.
HEX | Web
When designating colors in HTML and CSS, we use hexadecimal codes. Similar to RGB, Hex codes combine red green and blue values to produce specific colors: #RRGGBB
Example: CMYK vs. RGB
Since RGB colors get their vibrance from interacting with the light from the digital screen, printing them on paper yields disappointing results. RGB colors that are printed appear dull and desaturated on paper. This is why it’s important that you check your document color setting before beginning any work to make sure you’re in the correct color mode for your project.
The image above shows the same fuchsia color in the two different color modes. Note how sad the CMYK looks compared to the vibrancy of RGB.
PRINT TIP: APPEARANCE OF BLACK
Using the incorrect black swatch can result in too much or too little coverage when printing. Some side effects of this are smearing, halos, or blacks appearing dark brown in print. There are three types of blacks you should be aware of: rich, registration and flat.
Rich Black
Rich black combines the CMYK values on all four plates to make black. Note, on the graphic below, that the total ink coverage is 240%, which is why you should use rich black anywhere in your design where large areas of black appear, to ensure that it prints properly.
Rich black CMYK: 60/40/40/100
Total area coverage: 240%
Registration Black
Registration black shouldn’t appear in your design at all; it’s used for registration marks.
Registration black CMYK: 100/100/100/100
Total area coverage: 400%
Flat Black
You should use flat black for body copy and small type to avoid the ‘halo effect’. Body copy is generally small, so if you were to use rich black, the CMYK plates could misalign, resulting in any of the inks bleeding off the side of a letter.
You should not use flat black on large text, graphics or on backgrounds. Because the total coverage is only 100% (as opposed to 240%), flat black will appear dark brown in print.
Flat black CMYK: 0/0/0/100
Total area coverage: 100%
Halo effect happens when CMYK printing plates misalign during printing