In the art and design industry you commonly hear the acronym “CMYK”. What is CMYK or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key? They are the basic colors used in color printing. These colors have been around since, more or less, the dawn of color printing. They are the cheapest and fastest way for commercial printers to print out color images, and if you look closely at old pictures and comics you can actually see the separate colors in pixilated dots. Using a CMYK color chart, you can get most any color out of them. It is less seen these days due to advances in technology. However this process is still one of the fastest, cheapest, and most reliable methods of printing color.
What about colors?
More to the point what is CMYK useful for is tricking the eye. Colors are different frequencies of light, or combinations of those frequencies. Our eyes aren't perfect, and even less so our brains. So, they take and average out the light they see, into approximations. When you have two sets of very small dots of color mixed in together, you eyes will average them to make a new color. Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the three basic colors that can be merged together in this manner to make most any other color. They are printed down as a bunch of small dots in various densities to generate the colors. In addition, the background color, usually white, and the key color, usually black, are added in to make the color light or dark.
The CMYK color chart is a chart of what proportions of each will yield which colors. More specifically not all printers have infinite resolution and printing quality, so you have to use the colors listed in the color chart if you want them printed out. Now, modern commercial printers have printing methods that can usually get any color you want, but this is not cheap. If you want to have a nice mass produced color scheme you must stick to the color pallet that is provided for you and design your artwork following it.
Taking note of CMYK colors
The most common places where you will encounter the CMYK colors are with large scale bulk printing that is cheap and disposable. A common example of this is newspaper comics, or older cheap comics from the 70s. Some mass produced pamphlets and fliers can use this process as well. Another more recent trend is to print T-shirts using the color method on them. However most instances of CMYK have been upgraded so that you can use any four colors on a given print run. So as long as you stick to just those four colors for the whole print run, it is almost as efficient as normal CMYK.
CMYK allows for a great deal more flexibility with colors and design than you might first imagine. As such, it is not to be underestimated as a viable design and printing solution. This color printing process will allow you to get a large scale print run of materials for a fairly cheap and reasonable price. Plus, it is also compatible with older printing methods.
What about colors?
More to the point what is CMYK useful for is tricking the eye. Colors are different frequencies of light, or combinations of those frequencies. Our eyes aren't perfect, and even less so our brains. So, they take and average out the light they see, into approximations. When you have two sets of very small dots of color mixed in together, you eyes will average them to make a new color. Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the three basic colors that can be merged together in this manner to make most any other color. They are printed down as a bunch of small dots in various densities to generate the colors. In addition, the background color, usually white, and the key color, usually black, are added in to make the color light or dark.
The CMYK color chart is a chart of what proportions of each will yield which colors. More specifically not all printers have infinite resolution and printing quality, so you have to use the colors listed in the color chart if you want them printed out. Now, modern commercial printers have printing methods that can usually get any color you want, but this is not cheap. If you want to have a nice mass produced color scheme you must stick to the color pallet that is provided for you and design your artwork following it.
Taking note of CMYK colors
The most common places where you will encounter the CMYK colors are with large scale bulk printing that is cheap and disposable. A common example of this is newspaper comics, or older cheap comics from the 70s. Some mass produced pamphlets and fliers can use this process as well. Another more recent trend is to print T-shirts using the color method on them. However most instances of CMYK have been upgraded so that you can use any four colors on a given print run. So as long as you stick to just those four colors for the whole print run, it is almost as efficient as normal CMYK.
CMYK allows for a great deal more flexibility with colors and design than you might first imagine. As such, it is not to be underestimated as a viable design and printing solution. This color printing process will allow you to get a large scale print run of materials for a fairly cheap and reasonable price. Plus, it is also compatible with older printing methods.
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