Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black Printing

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What Does Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black Printing Mean?

Cyan-magenta-yellow-black (CMYK) printing is a printing technique used by most color printers. Each color visible to the human eye can be described as a combination, in different ratios, of these four colors; a CMYK printer uses only these four colors to print any color on a document.

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Cyan-magenta-yellow-black printing is also known as four-color printing or process color printing.

Techopedia Explains Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black Printing

Cyan-magenta-yellow-black printing is a printing standard used in most color printers. A CMYK model is a pigment model whereby cyan, magenta, yellow and sometimes black are the primary pigments. All other pigments are made from the combination, in varying amounts, of these basic pigments. A tool for desktop publishing is used that matches the RGB display color to its corresponding CMYK value so the printed copy is the same as the displayed color.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.