What is CMYK is a question I seem to be asked many times! I always tell people the same thing and often wonder if it is understood. CMYK are the basic colours that build a full colour image in a brochure or leaflets, coloured text in a full colour print job also comes out of CMYK this is often the cheapest way to produce coloured work. However there is a down side to using Full colour and that is the limited colour spectrum. A good example of this is the colour orange, when printed as a sinlge ink spot colour oranges can appear very vibrant and bright, as soon as they are converted to CMYK they lose there punch and look muddy. But this in itself is a small price to pay for the price of using full colour.
Other problems can occur when people try to print from microsoft software such as Word and Excel, they may look good on your little printer but when printed by a professional print company the photos in the document can look flat and dull, the reason for this is that these programs are not meant to be used for commercial printing and use the RGB colour spectrum. A print company that knows the business can usually overcome this problem.
The colours that make up CMYK are C (cyan), M (magenta), Y (yellow) and K (black). Why does K stand for black?

Tags: CMYK, printing, colour