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Design Digital Media Through Photoshop Digital Media Basics Display and Print

Tonnie Fanadez
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Tonnie Fanadez
UX Design Techdegree Graduate 22,796 Points

CYMK Explanation

This is not a question just an explanation of CYMK color used in Print.

CYMK Stands for "Cyan Magenta Yellow Black." These are the four basic colors used for printing color images. Unlike RGB (red, green, blue), which is used for creating images on your computer screen, CMYK colors are "subtractive." This means the colors get darker as you blend them together. Since RGB colors are used for light, not pigments, the colors grow brighter as you blend them or increase their intensity.

Technically, adding equal amounts of pure cyan, magenta, and yellow should produce black. However, because of impurities in the inks, true black is difficult to create by blending the colors together. This is why black (K) ink is typically included with the three other colors. The letter "K" is used to avoid confusion with blue in RGB.

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,184 Points

Good info, I didn't realize it was not covered in the course.

And another reason printers contain black ink/toner is that even if accuracy were not an issue, it's way cheaper to print black&white with one color instead of three.