Why do printers have CMYK ink instead of RYB & black ink?
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I work with silver halide (laser) printers. They print by blasting the silver crystal infused paper with certain wavelengths of light, which modifies the color after a few chemical processes. Our photosensitive paper contains the pigments CMYK in a gel layer, but we read/calibrate the printer lasers using RGB.
The conversion is pretty simple. Red light corresponds with cyan pigment, green with magenta, and blue with yellow. They are inverse relationships: The more red, less cyan. The less yellow, more blue. The “key” (density) is the depth and intensity of the color contrast, which is modulated with black pigment.
Say you needed to make your prints slightly more cyan to achieve color accuracy – you would actually subtract a “point” of red light from the laser for each “point” of cyan you want to add to the print. You add green to reduce magenta, subtract yellow to increase the blue, etc. Density is a direct (not inverse) relationship – black is just black.
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