Colour Printing (Document)

Color printing or colour printing is the reproduction of an image or text in color (as opposed to simpler black and white or monochrome printing.Four inks are used: three secondary colors plus black. These ink colors are cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black); abbreviated as CMYK. Cyan can be thought of as minus-red, magenta as minus-green, and yellow as minus-blue. These inks are semi-transparent or translucent. Where two such inks overlap on the paper due to sequential printing impressions, a primary color is perceived. For example, yellow (minus-blue) overprinted by magenta (minus green) yields red. Where all three inks may overlap, almost all incident light is absorbed or subtracted, yielding near black, but in practical terms it is better and cheaper to use a separate black ink instead of combining three colored inks. The secondary or subtractive colors cyan, magenta and yellow may be considered "primary" by printers and watercolorists (whose basic inks and paints are transparent).