C YM K

Helen He

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Table of ContentCMYK Color Model 1

What's CMYK? 3

What's Pantone? 5

Color Charts 7

Benefits from Black 11

What's a Halftone? 13

Color Conversion 15

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The CMYK color model is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four inks used in some color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black).

CMYK Color Model

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What's CMYK?

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C is for CyanCyan is also called aqua or blue-green, and was formerly known as "cyan blue". It may be used as the name of any of a number of colors in the blue/green range of the spectrum.

Y is for YellowYellow is the hue of that portion of the visible spectrum lying between orange and green; any of a group of colors of a hue resembling that of ripe lemons and varying in lightness and saturation.

K is for BlackBlack is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum. Although black is sometimes described as an "achromatic", or hueless, color, in practice it can be considered a color.

M is for MagentaThe name magenta comes from the dye magenta, commonly called fuchsine. In the Munsell color system, magenta is called red-purple.

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What's Pantone?

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The Pantone Color Matching System is largely a standardized color reproduction system. By standardizing the colors, different manufacturers in different locations can all refer to the Pantone system to make sure colors match without direct contact with one another.

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CYMK/PantoneColorCharts

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A majority of the world's printed material is produced using the CMYK process, and there is a special subset of Pantone colors that can be reproduced using CMYK.

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Benefits from BlackIn color separations, a red keyline on the black line art marked the outline of solid or tint color areas. Sometimes a black keyline was used when it served as both a color indicator and an outline to be printed in black. Because usually the black plate contained the keyline, the K in CMYK represents the keyline or black plate also sometimes called the key plate.

Text is typically printed in black and includes fine detail, so to reproduce text or other finely detailed outlines using three inks without slight blurring would require impractically accurate registration.

A combination of 100% cyan, magenta, and yellow inks soaks the paper with ink, making it slower to dry, and sometimes impractically so.

A combination of 100% cyan, magenta, and yellow inks often results in a muddy dark brown color that does not quite appear black. Adding black ink absorbs more light, and yields much darker blacks.

Using black ink is less expensive than using the corresponding amounts of colored inks.

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What's A Halftone?

With CMYK printing, halftoning allows for less than full saturation of the primary colors; tiny dots of each primary color are printed in a pattern small enough that human beings perceive a solid color.

Magenta printed with a 20% halftone, for example, produces a pink color, because the eye perceives the tiny magenta large dots and the white paper between the dots as lighter and less saturated than the color of pure magenta ink.

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Color Conversion

RGB and CMYK spaces are both device-dependent spaces, there is no simple or general conversion formula that converts between them. Conversions are generally done through color management systems, using color profiles that describe the spaces being converted. Nevertheless, the conversions cannot be exact, particularly where these spaces have different gamuts.

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Sources

Lauer, David A. Design Basics. [S.l.]: Cengage Learning, 2008. Print.

Lidwell, William, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler. Universal Principles of Design. Gloucester, MA: Rockport, 2003. Print.

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