Short guide on Color mode selection

 

You might have across the RGB, CMYK mode and wondered what these are used for. I did not have any knowledge regarding these until one of the posters I designed was sent back citing the mode was wrong. And thus I decided to learn the valuable lesson about various modes of designing in Photoshop. Making it as simple as possible and condensing everything into a few lines, here is how you use it. (You can select the mode in the menu from Image>Mode).

RGB

Red, Green, Blue mode is used primarily for digital photos and those designated for computer screens like webpage graphics. Inkjet printers also use the same.

CMYK

So this is the one to select if you are doing the work for print purpose. All offset printing use this mode and so is for high-end inkjet printers.

Grayscale

This is the usual Black and white which can be used for both purposes mentioned above- printing and web-based images.

Indexed Color

This mode limits your color selection to 256 or a Color table. This is used for web-based images where the size of the image needs to be limited by saving it as GIF or PNG8 especially in case of buttons and banners.

Lab Color

Lab mode is used only when you need to use some filters like Sharpen filters (which will of course be prompted). We have to change the mode back to RGB or CMYK before saving the work.

Duotone

Meaning two color tones used throughout your image, it is used solely for commercial printing purposes, but not on inkjets.

Bitmap

Bitmap is simply Black and white and the difference is there are no gray tones in between as in grayscale. You can use it anywhere, but the image always looks so.

Multichannel

It is similar to duotone where premixed colors are used. It is used for commercial printing purposes and mainly for logo designing. 

But always remember that changing from one color mode to another reduces the quality of your image and hence need to be done beforehand. Moreover, converting back to your original mode does not retain the original quality.

Newspaper Designs: The best of two worlds

I have never thought newspaper as a target for designing. But I understood that all my predispositions were misplaced when I recently came across a Behance article. It was about redesigning one of the popular newspapers which I read daily and spans whole 16 pages into a single page paper. Though I have ogled a lot about the projects for the architecture and designing students, I was really astonished with this creative endeavor (may be I haven't seen enough of the design web). Anyway please do have a look at the project: Behance:Express-Newspaper

As usual rest of my day was finished in finding the best of newspaper designs around the world and I have found a few. The ones that touched my tastes are listed here. Do comment on the ones you like and the ones you have found elsewhere.

1. De Morgen

Awarded the Europe's Best Designed Newspaper which can be called the Oscar in Newspaper design. The use of easily comprehensible graphics is adopted as you can see in the online newspaper from the site of this Flemish paper.

2. der Freitag

This bold and simple newspaper design was adjudged the best by SND. Click the link for the 3 best newspaper designs and the images for the inside pages.

And along are some of the winners in other categories and those who have entered the list: Periodic winners

3. Smalandsposten

From European Newspaper Awards.

4. „I“ informação

This was awarded in the tenth European Design Awards 

Some others in the list are

5. Stuttgarter Zeitung

6. 24sata

Look at some of the other visualisations and infographics

Into visual story telling. Read more about it in the link provided.

7. Seattle Times: Mariner's Makeover

Shooters Touch

8. O Independente

9. The Oregonian

10. Die Zeit

11. San Jose Mercury News

12. The Guardian

13. Aripaev

14. Hartford Courant

15. Dubai Express

16. The Rzeczpospolita

18. Politiken

The links provided in the above lists would be useful in browsing through some of the best designed newspapers in the world. It is a fact that European newspapers are better off when it comes to designing and usage of infographics though the rest of the world is catching up.