This is going to be one of the more technical, behind-the-scenes articles, where we share the story of our custom woven products technology. We echo Leonardo da Vinci’s mantra that science and art need not be separate, and can come together to produce beautiful works. We’ll be showing you the background of why we use Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) instead of Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Key (fancy word for ‘black’) (CMYK) in our custom woven products. Enjoy!
So What Are RGB and CMYK Anyway?
You probably learned in fifth-grade science that white light is made up of all the colors in the rainbow blended together, and that objects of a certain color, like a green apple, will only reflect that wavelength of light, and appear green. The human eye has cells that detect only red, green, and blue frequencies of light; the brain uses the data from those photoreceptors to compose the millions of colors we actually see.
Computers, phones, and other devices’ screens use the RGB model of generating color, because it’s what our own eyes use. It might seem a little contradictory to the color wheel you learned in art class, with blue, yellow, and red being the primary colors, but in reality you can generate nearly every color from mixing red, green, and blue in different amounts.
While RGB reigns in the digital (and biological) world of producing color, CMYK is used more in printing. If you have an inkjet printer in your home or office, next time you change the ink, or before you throw it out the window when it breaks, you might notice the ink cartridges are labeled with CMYK. While RGB is great for digital coloring, having four colors when printing gives the printer more control when generating colored images. In addition to crisper images and more vivid colors, it also helps the printer save a little ink. Black is added to the CMYK standard because you’re printing on white paper most of the time; this isn’t needed in RGB because screens are dark to begin with, and illuminated by a backlight.
Got It–So How Does Printing Differ from Weaving?
In other articles, we’ve talked about how there are two main ways to transfer designs onto textiles–printing, and weaving. To summarize here real quick, printing designs onto a textile is rather similar to your typical inkjet printer; CMYK ink is still used to apply the design directly to fabric. In the olden days though, a screen was used instead–the fabric was placed inside a screen with a stencil or mesh of the design on top, and then ink was applied with a blade or squeegee. Regardless of the technique, printing is a cheap and fast way of applying a design to fabric, albeit less durable than a woven one.
Weaving a design directly into a fabric is more costly and time consuming, but translates to a more quality and durable product that will survive more use. Modern printers have infinitesimal control over the ink mixed in the design, but that isn’t the case with weaving because each thread is a particular color, and can’t just be mixed into a new color with another thread. The threads each stand out as their own color; this must be accounted for when weaving images together.
For us, our standard blankets and tapestries are made by weaving color palette for red, blue, green, yellow, black, and white yarn–the best of both the RGB and CMYK worlds put together. White and black must be included because unlike RGB or CMYK, there’s no “background” to weaving, because there’s no dark screen or white paper involved. White and black are used extensively in producing the background of the design, and woven in to reduce the intensity of the other colors. Again, red, blue, green, and yellow are used because along with black and white, they can generate most of the colors you need. It’s important to realize that your eye does the producing of the colors; the threads aren’t mixed together, but woven so finely that your eyes will blend them together, effectively producing the desired color in your brain. Gives new meaning to “beauty in the eye of the beholder,” right?
This is one of the reasons why weaving is more demanding than printing a design onto fabric. More material is involved, since you need to use individual threads that can’t be physically mixed together. You have to account for how the eye will perceive the image, which can be tricky and varies by the thread count, color, and fineness of the threads. Thankfully, computers and software have helped with this process, simplifying the production of beautiful woven designs, through the use of technology our extremely skilled weavers. If you are interested in learning more or creating your own woven blankets or tapestries, contact us at info@fiberart.com!
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