You're doing a print job in Photoshop. What color mode should you use for the document?

• A. Grayscale
• B. CMYK
• C. RGB
• D. LAB

Answer: (B)

For print work, using CMYK is essential because printers reproduce color with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks. Working in CMYK from the start helps ensure the colors you design will print more predictably, since RGB colors are created with light and can look different when converted to ink-based CMYK. If you design in RGB, the conversion to CMYK can shift or dull some colors that don’t have an exact ink equivalent.

Grayscale is for black-and-white images and would remove color entirely. RGB is intended for screens, where colors are brighter and use a different gamut that doesn’t map directly to printed ink. LAB is a device-independent space used for certain color workflows, but it isn’t the standard starting point for typical print documents.

So, CMYK is the best choice for a document destined for printing.