I confess I'm totally clueless about this, and I've tried Adobe's Help pages to further my confusion. Which color system should I be using, ie; which is the "safest" or "best"? I assume it would depend on the type of image, so say I want to acheive the best possible outcome for high detailed, high res pics (unless of course it's all to do with what type of printer one uses). If I use a certain color system will it print out horrible or display terribly on another monitor? Should I be using a secific system for a specific monitor of computer model? Yikes!

if you're going to be doing everything from conception-design-print on your own computer, don't give a fudge what anyone else's monitor looks like for one. Setup your monitor and printer to work in conjunction with eachother so you can get as accurate colours printed out as possible. Personally, a combination of RGB and CMYK me thinks would be best. RGB for working is what I see to be a good choice, as certain options (ie: filters, etc) won't fucntion properly or at all under other modes such as CMYK. Oncethe image is completed, I say move to CMYK setup, which will alter your image a fair bit, but all you have to do is some colour adjusting. The really highquality printers use a Cyan Magenta Yellow Black(K) setup. That would be what I would do if I either had a really high quality printer, or was going to ship it out to be printed on a high quality printer. The colours tend be be more accurate (I believe RGB is an addative model, and CMYK is a subtractive... not sure). on the bright side, thanks to my mumbling an incoherence, either Retrocity or Alpha will come and clear up my nonsense. This has been dicussed before though, check the archives of the printing forum, it was one of the first (and only it would seem) discussions brought up there.

CMYK is the addition of color (ink) while RGB is the addition of light. The best way to prove that is because 100% of C,M,Y and K makes black, while 100% (255) of R,G and B makes white. I'd say your best bet is to pick one and stick with it since going back and forth between the two gets very confusing! :) Unless you do like Slynky said and work with one for the filters, then convert when you're all done. I do it that way, converting to CMYK for the color-correction process since I can get a much more precise color management with CMYK. And also not all high-end printers use CMYK, unfortunately. Some really good Epson printers use RGB, as do most color laser printers. But all in all, if you're going to be doing commercial work and taking it to be printed professionally, your best bet is to convert it to CMYK at the end. Good Luck!

as long as I wasn't spewing complete guano, cool

thanks guys. Looks like creating in RGB then converting to CMYK is the way to go. and I can always save a version in each mode.