Color modes in Photoshop: Based on the variety of color modes in the shade version, the color setting identifies how a shade’s parts are integrated. A variety of color modes are available, including grayscale, RGB, and CMYK. Photoshop Elements supports bitmap, grayscale, indexed, and RGB color modes.
RGB Color
In the Photoshop RGB Color setting, each pixel is appointed a strength value based on the RGB version. An 8-bit-per-channel image has intensities ranging from 0 (black) to 255 (white) for each of its RGB components (red, green, blue). A bright red color, for instance, has an R-value of 246, a G value of 20, and a B value of 50. Neutral gray is the result of equal values for all three components. When the values of all components are 255, the result is pure white; when the values are 0, pure black.
In spite of RGB being a standard color model, the range of colors represented can vary depending on the application or display device. In Photoshop, RGB Color mode is determined by the working space setting in the Color Settings dialog box.
CMYK Color
CMYK or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, are subtractive colors and are the standard ink colors for printing. This means that whenever we print an image, we are using CMYK inks to produce the print.
The CMYK mode assigns a percentage value to each pixel. Small percentages of process ink colors are assigned to the lightest (highlight) colors, while larger percentages are assigned to the darker (shadow) colors.
Grayscale Mode
An image in grayscale mode uses different shades of gray. 8bit images can have up to 256 shades of gray. Grayscale images have pixels with brightness values ranging from 0 (black) to 255 (white). The number of shades in 16- and 32-bit images is much higher than in 8-bit images.
The grayscale value can also be expressed as a percentage of black ink coverage (0% equals white, 100% equals black).
Color Settings’ Grayscale mode uses the range defined by the working space setting.
Lab Color Mode
The LAB color mode is also known as CIELab (pronounced See-Lab). There are two channels for Lightness (L) and two channels for Color (A and B) in the color mode. In addition to the Lightness channel (L), the Green-Red Axis channel (A) and Blue-Yellow Axis channel (B) range from +127 to -128.
Indexed Color
Uses up to 256 colors. An indexed-color image is an 8-bit image. In order to convert an image into indexed color, Photoshop Elements creates a color lookup table (CLUT), which stores and indexes the colors. The program picks the closest color or simulates the color using available colors if a color in the original image does not appear in the table. A web page could benefit from indexed color by reducing the number of colors while maintaining visual quality. This mode allows limited editing. Convert temporarily into RGB mode if you are going to do extensive editing.
Multichannel mode
A multichannel image contains 256 levels of gray and is useful for specialized printing. Images conserved in multichannel mode can be conserved in Photoshop, Big File Format (PSB), Photoshop 2.0, Photoshop Raw, or Photoshop DCS 2.0.
Bitmap Mode
The pixels in a bitmap image are stood for using either color (black or white). As Bitmap pictures have a little bit deepness of 1, they are called bitmapped 1bit pictures.
Duotone mode
The term duotone refers to monotones, tritones, and quadtones as well as duotones in Photoshop. A monotone image is a grayscale image printed with a single color other than black. The three types of grayscale images are duotones, tritones, and quadtones, which are printed with two, three, and four inks, respectively. Instead of different shades of gray, colored inks are used to reproduce tinted grays in these images.
