CMYK color is a type of color formatting used primarily in the printing industry. This type of color formatting uses only 4 colors, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, to produce a wide range of visible colors. By mixing these 4 colors in different ratios, practically any desired color can be produced. The term “4-Color” is commonly used to describe CMYK color in the print industry.
An example of CMYK color might be a green logo on a business card. The logo might look like its just one color, maybe a solid dark green. If this logo was formatted in CMYK and you were look at it under a magnifying glass, you would notice that the green logo is actually made up of many small dots. These dots are not green at all, they are cyan, magenta, yellow, and black dots. When you look at those dots from a normal distance, they just appear to be green. CMYK color takes advantage of this optical illusion.
CMYK color differs from other color formats because of the specific colors that it uses. Some alternative color formats such as RGB use Red, Green, and Blue to achieve a similar optical illusion that CMYK relies on. On the other side of the spectrum, there are also some color formats that are very different than CMYK, such as Pantone color, which rely on liquid ink being mixed before they are applied to the paper.
There are two main reasons that CMYK color is popular. The first is because all digital printers use CMYK color. The second is because it allows offset presses to run many different prints without having to change the ink colors after each run. We will explain both of these reason in detail.
All digital printers use CMYK color by default. Digital printing is far more popular than offset printing due to the fact that desktop printers are actually small digital presses. That means that there are a lot of them in the world. Production grade digital printers use the exact same technology as desktop printers, just on a more industrial scale. In general, the appeal of digital printing is that it makes small print runs much more affordable. For example, when using Pantone colors on an offset press, you would spend a lot of time mixing inks, making press plates, mounting plates on rollers, and operating the machinery. All of those things cost time and money, which makes small print runs unrealistic. With digital printing you can just press a button and the machine does all the work for you. This concept of digital printing was revolutionary because it allows smaller runs to be produced easily and inexpensively.
As opposed to digital printing, offset printing is extremely cost effective for medium to large volume print runs. In many cases, the color formatting for offset printing is Pantone, which must be individually mixed for every different color that you see. The problem is that most consumers order small quantities of printed goods which each have their own colors. It would be too difficult to wash and mix inks between each order. Therefore, the question is how can we group many small orders together so they can be printed at one time, and take advantage of the volume efficiency inherent in offset printing? CMYK color provides the solution to this problem. If all visible colors are comprised of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black dots, then we can just keep those colors loaded in the press, and not have to wash and mix between each order. CMYK allows the press to keep running at all times, which increases efficiency and dramatically lowers costs.
There are definitely some drawbacks of CMYK color. The most apparent limitation of CMYK is would be its lack of consistency. Due to factors such as humidity, paper type, electricity levels, and many more, CMYK color can vary considerably between print runs. This is drawback is not present in Pantone color. The lack of color control in CMYK color limits its use for branding, particularly logos.
The key points to remember about the CMYK color printing process are its versatility and efficiency for small print runs. It also allows offset presses to operate with efficiency because many different orders can be grouped together without having to wash and mix inks. CMYK has issues with color control which prevent it from being used in certain situations such as branding.
