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Help Centre
Colour profiles and spaces define how colour is interpreted in a digital program. Colour profiles are used to define the colours that are used overall in a program. Everything that is opened in the program will be interpreted and filtered by that colour profile. Colour spaces are the options you will find in a program’s colour wheel, and are interchangeable as you work. Very often profiles and spaces overlap. There are many available, however only a few are very commonly used.
Colour Profiles - RGB and CMYK
RGB and CMYK are generally more often used as colour profiles, however colour spaces are also available for those who would prefer to stick to one profile and switch between the two while working.
RGBRGB stands for RED, BLUE and GREEN. These are the base colours from which all RGB hues are created. RGB is best used for digital work, basically anything that does not need to go into commercial print production. This includes things like TV shows, Youtube videos, websites, digital art etc. Toon Boom Harmony is a program that exclusively uses an RGB colour profile. | |
CMYKCMYK stands for CYAN, MAGENTA, YELLOW and BLACK. This colour profile is exclusively used for projects that need to go into commercial print. Things like magazines, brochures, menus etc. all have to be printed from a CMYK colour profile. This is because commercial printers do not have the capabilities to print the very bright colours of RGB, so instead plates for CMYK colours are used and overlap with one another to create new colours. You can print an RGB design on a CMYK printer, however the colours will automatically be switched to CMYK and will be dulled as a result. Hence it is a good idea to design in CMYK from the start if you plan to commercially print. This does not include Laserjet printers as they are considered to be digital printers and can replicate RGB colours much closer than the commercial printers. You will find CMYK colour profiles and spaces in programs that allow for both digital and print design. |
Colour Spaces - RGB and HSV
RGB and HSV are colour spaces used in a multitude of digital programs. RGB stands for RED, GREEN and BLUE (as mentioned previously) and HSV stands for HUE, SATURATION and VALUE (also known as HSB where ‘B’ stands for BRIGHTNESS).
These are spaces found in the colour picker or colour wheel section of a program and they allow you to create new colours by selecting certain aspects of the colour and working from there.
This just depends on your preference as a creator and does not affect how a colour is displayed in the program. How a colour is displayed is determined by the program’s colour profile, and not the colour space.
However HSV tends to be a more popular colour space amongst creators. This is because HSV separates the hue from its saturation and value components, whereas a colour in RGB is created from pure colour and encompasses the value and saturation as well.
RGBUsing this colour space to pick your colours means that all the components of your colour will be determined by a mixture of RGB (red, green, blue.) Value and saturation is therefore created with adding more or less of a colour rather than using a pure form of light and dark or saturation. HSV/HSBHSV is generally used more because each component of the colour is completely separate. This way an artist can see their hue, its value and its saturation in completely separate displays. This means that your hue is always the same and is only changed with how much light/dark and saturation you add to it. Both these colour spaces are available in programs like Harmony, giving you the freedom to switch between or even combine the two colour spaces. | ||
| RGB | HSV |