CMYK … Possibly the best four letter acronym ever?

CMYK is probably one of the better known four letter acronyms outside of its own business sector.

From early childhood we are made aware that Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black) are more commonly known as CMYK.

These are the four colours of ink used in the traditional method of printing hard copies of images, called offset printing.  

The three colours plus black, roughly correspond to the primary colours, from which many mixed colours can be made across the visible spectrum.

Of course, CMYK cannot reproduce any colour that exists in the world, but it can produce a great number. It’s impossible to match things like a parrot feather, rose petal, or oak leaf … but the colour system can get remarkably close.

• CMYK is capable of creating so many different colours because we not only use inks in varying ratios to each other, but with a varying concentration – noted as a percentage. These combinations create colours that span the spectrum in hue (what we think of as colour) as well as tone, or intensity.
• It is important to note, however, that CMYK is limited by outside factors including the qualities of the paper, the integrity of the ink and the halftone dot size.

 

Now that we live in a digital age, much is made of the conversions between CMYK colour and RGB (Red, Green, and Blue). Here’s a technical bit: RGB colour varies light, instead of pigment, to achieve the visible spectrum.

We encounter RGB colour in monitors that actually emit light at a certain wavelength, rather than reflect existing light. For this reason, the screen image of a picture in RGB will never match the printed image in CMYK. And, although these colour systems are related, one colour cannot directly convert to another.