How Does CMYK (Full Color Printing) Work?

If you are new to the commercial printing industry then this article may help you understand how exactly CMYK printing works. But if you have some experience, then this article may seem rather basic. Nevertheless, it never hurts to review.

CMYK printing or sometimes referred to four color or full color printing, is a form of printing that uses four basic ink colors to achieve an endless possible number of colors on paper. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, & Black are what CMYK stands for.

Basically how this process works is that your design or image is color separated via pre-press equipment into four plates (colors), each one of the four plates represents one of the CMYK colors. If you looked at the plates you would see very small dots instead of a full image. It is these dots that are printed on the paper. Based on the number, quantity, closeness to each other, and color of the dots, determines what the final image will look like.

The reason you would use this form of printing is if you had color photos in your brochure or chose to use a large variety of PMS colors. The beauty of CMYK printing is that there are endless possibilities of colors and photos that you can use in your brochure, letterhead, business card, or postcard because no matter what color you want, it can be created through the CMYK process.

The only downside to CMYK printing is that is more expensive that spot color printing, but it just all depends on your budget.

I will talk more about spot color printing in my next article.

Brian