Halftone printing uses drops of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink applied to paper to create graphics, text and images. The smaller the dot size, the lighter the color, the larger the dot size, the darker the color. The eye perceives the layers of dotted color as solid fields of color.

BLACK & WHITE

100% black and 0% Yellow, Cyan and Magenta would make black, right? Well... yes... and no. For the blackest black, designers should use RICH black, which is created using percentages of each color as well as black. White is created by the absense of ink: 0% ink = White. Keep in mind that if you're not printing on white paper, "white" will be the color of your paper stock.

cmyk

Ink is used to create the CMYK color space and is also known as Process Color, Four-color and Subtractive Color. Subtractive refers to the ink's reflective and absorbative nature on paper as well as the fact that subtraction of all color on paper will result in white (if the paper is white).

Each color created in the CMYK color space is derrived by percentages of each ink: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black) and is affected by the color of the underlying paper. The "K" in CMYK refers to the Key plate used to produce the detail in images. Normally, black is used for the Key plate, but in two color printing, the darkest of the two colors is used for the Key plate.

Color in CMYK is made up of percentages of each ink. There are approximately 1 million color combinations possible. Zero percent of each ink will result in white, or the color of the paper. The RGB primaries can be created using combinations of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow as follows:

CYAN + YELLOW = GREEN         CYAN + MAGENTA = BLUE
YELLOW + MAGENTA = RED
CYAN + MAGENTA + YELLOW = BLACK

DEVICES Which devises use CMYK? All printers, from the high end print engines found in commercial print shops to the Xerox copier in the office, use CMYK inks to deliver printed media. Vector designs are typically created in CMYK or using Spot Colors. If your vector design is going to be printed, it is important to choose CMYK colors. Since the CMYK color space is the smallest, choosing CMYK colors will ensure consistancy througout different outputs. For additional infomation on how each color space relates to each other, check out this Guide. For help on converting colors from CMYK to web, check out these Tools.