what does CMYK mean/standfor

[crgowo]

nm just saw it stantds for cyan magneta yellow black. :)

[EricChadwick]

Yeah, print colors. Perhaps K is for black because B is already taken for Blue?

[rikrog]

that's right kids

[Ian Jones]

K actually stands for KEY. Black is the base print ink for most things, so they call it the KEY. I should read up on it, but thats how I remember it.

[rikrog]

Mmm. not heared that before. you learn something new everyday eh. seems odd to me mind, i used to work at a little printers with a two colour (two passes for full colour) press. and the cyan was the first colour to be layed down?

[Levitateme]

if you have adobe photoshop, they have a nice discussion of this in the help documentations.

[Ian Jones]

rikrok, I didnt mean that black gets layed down first...

[conio]

As real "ink-colors" (for printer) aren't really that "clean" as they should actually be, in fact especially the cyan-ink isn't "clean" at all, you won't get a "real" black from mixing all the three primary colors together (CMY).....this will look ugly brown....

So what they do is just put "real" black as an extra ink to the printer....

But now the problem is: "How do we get an CMYK-image out of an RGB?"

Since RGB has only three channels and CMYK four, we have to seperate information from our RGB-image to tell the prog where it shall use our "real" black (K-channel) or where to use CMY to get the right color on our print.....

Seperation is really a BIG theme in professional printing companies......

P.S.: I do use the CMYK-mode sometimes because you can make masks very well with the seperated channels...

[jud]

Hi

I work in the warehouse of an ink jet manufacturing company and the ink they use is cyan,magenta,yellow and KAHLUA.

M.J

[Primitive]

Originally posted by Ian Jones
K actually stands for KEY. Black is the base print ink for most things, so they call it the KEY. I should read up on it, but thats how I remember it.

I've been wondering for months how Black became K. Thanks a bunch!

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