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Color and Light · entry 51 of 52
Printed images use cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink to reproduce many colors.
The longer version
Ink works by subtraction. Cyan removes red, magenta removes green, and yellow removes blue, so overlapping dots of the three can leave almost any desired combination of wavelengths reaching the eye. Black is added separately because mixing the three gives a muddy dark and wastes ink.
The dots are tiny and patterned at different angles, and the eye merges them from a normal reading distance, which is why a magnified magazine photo resolves into separate marks. Colour management matters because the same numbers print differently on different papers. Screens and presses use opposite primaries, so translation between them is never exact.
Where this entry sits
These facts explore how light behaves and how human eyes turn it into the colors we see. Along the way you meet rainbows, prisms, mirrors, shadows, lasers, and optical tricks that fool our vision every day. The full list sits on the Color and Light page, where every entry is listed in order.
More From Color and Light
Eight more entriesStop signals are usually red because the color stands out against most natural backgrounds.
Read 1The human eye detects color using three types of cone cells sensitive to red, green, and blue light.
Read 2Rainbows form when sunlight bends and reflects inside countless tiny water droplets in the air.
Read 3A prism splits white light into a spectrum because each wavelength bends by a different amount.
Read 4Shadows appear when an opaque object blocks light from reaching a surface behind it.
Read 5Mirrors reflect light because a thin metal coating bounces most incoming rays straight back.
Read 6A red apple looks red because its skin absorbs most colors and reflects red wavelengths.
Read 7White objects look white because they reflect nearly all wavelengths of visible light equally.
Read