Why do printers have CMYK ink instead of RYB & black ink?
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light mixing creates the colors
with RGB, you’re directly creating the light, so you mix them to get the colors. they call this additive because you add colors together
with CMYK, you filter light that either goes through it, or reflects off of it. so light created by something like an LED will be RGB, and things like light filters or paint, will be CMYK. think of them as the opposite. for cyan, the purple and yellow get absorbed, and only the blue/green comes through, for example
it’s like building a snowman. CMYK is like starting with a giant block of snow. you carve it and remove snow until you’re left with a snowman. it’s subtractive. if you gather snow to build the snowman, that’s how RGB works. in the end, you get the same result, but you got there from opposite directions. hope that makes a little sense. YouTube probably has some cool videos on the topic if you want illustrations
Red, green, and blue (RGB) are primary colors when you use light to add colors together. If you look at a computer monitor under a microscope, you have little red, green, and blue lights. Red and blue lights add together to make magenta. Red and green lights add together to make yellow. And blue and green add together to make cyan. Add all three and you have a white light.
Cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) are primary colors when you use pigment (like ink or paint) to subtract colors. When white light strikes yellow ink, the ink is only reflecting back the yellow light. That’s why it’s yellow. If you mix magenta and yellow it will create red. Cyan and magenta creates blue. And yellow and cyan creates green. All three colors together create black.
It’s interesting how adding colors with light complements subtracting colors with ink or paint.
The K in CMYK is for black ink or paint. Technically you don’t need black ink, especially when you print photographs. Some photo printers don’t have black ink, it just mixes CMY to get black. BUT if you print something with a lot of text, it’s difficult to layer CMY exactly to get crisp, easy to read text.
Plus it wastes a lot of color ink.
So black ink is usually added to printing (CMYK). Typically all color elements are printed first then black is layered on top while adding all the black text throughout the print.
Red, green, and blue (RGB) are primary colors when you use light to add colors together. If you look at a computer monitor under a microscope, you have little red, green, and blue lights. Red and blue lights add together to make magenta. Red and green lights add together to make yellow. And blue and green add together to make cyan. Add all three and you have a white light.
Cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) are primary colors when you use pigment (like ink or paint) to subtract colors. When white light strikes yellow ink, the ink is only reflecting back the yellow light. That’s why it’s yellow. If you mix magenta and yellow it will create red. Cyan and magenta creates blue. And yellow and cyan creates green. All three colors together create black.
It’s interesting how adding colors with light complements subtracting colors with ink or paint.
The K in CMYK is for black ink or paint. Technically you don’t need black ink, especially when you print photographs. Some photo printers don’t have black ink, it just mixes CMY to get black. BUT if you print something with a lot of text, it’s difficult to layer CMY exactly to get crisp, easy to read text.
Plus it wastes a lot of color ink.
So black ink is usually added to printing (CMYK). Typically all color elements are printed first then black is layered on top while adding all the black text throughout the print.
Red, green, and blue (RGB) are primary colors when you use light to add colors together. If you look at a computer monitor under a microscope, you have little red, green, and blue lights. Red and blue lights add together to make magenta. Red and green lights add together to make yellow. And blue and green add together to make cyan. Add all three and you have a white light.
Cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) are primary colors when you use pigment (like ink or paint) to subtract colors. When white light strikes yellow ink, the ink is only reflecting back the yellow light. That’s why it’s yellow. If you mix magenta and yellow it will create red. Cyan and magenta creates blue. And yellow and cyan creates green. All three colors together create black.
It’s interesting how adding colors with light complements subtracting colors with ink or paint.
The K in CMYK is for black ink or paint. Technically you don’t need black ink, especially when you print photographs. Some photo printers don’t have black ink, it just mixes CMY to get black. BUT if you print something with a lot of text, it’s difficult to layer CMY exactly to get crisp, easy to read text.
Plus it wastes a lot of color ink.
So black ink is usually added to printing (CMYK). Typically all color elements are printed first then black is layered on top while adding all the black text throughout the print.
This might be slightly oversimplified but nobody has really eli5ed it yet.
The paper starts white and gets darker from there with the ink. Red green and blue are darker colors than cyan magenta and yellow. When you add R G or B ink together you can only go darker and you wouldn’t be able to create the colors that are lighter than those three.
If you start off with lighter colors you can still make your way to the darker colors.
You can simulate the way all of this works by opening your favorite image editing software that has blending modes. Make a set of three circles, set the blend mode to multiply on each layer and overlap them and see what happens. You can try it for both RGB and CMY.
This might be slightly oversimplified but nobody has really eli5ed it yet.
The paper starts white and gets darker from there with the ink. Red green and blue are darker colors than cyan magenta and yellow. When you add R G or B ink together you can only go darker and you wouldn’t be able to create the colors that are lighter than those three.
If you start off with lighter colors you can still make your way to the darker colors.
You can simulate the way all of this works by opening your favorite image editing software that has blending modes. Make a set of three circles, set the blend mode to multiply on each layer and overlap them and see what happens. You can try it for both RGB and CMY.
This might be slightly oversimplified but nobody has really eli5ed it yet.
The paper starts white and gets darker from there with the ink. Red green and blue are darker colors than cyan magenta and yellow. When you add R G or B ink together you can only go darker and you wouldn’t be able to create the colors that are lighter than those three.
If you start off with lighter colors you can still make your way to the darker colors.
You can simulate the way all of this works by opening your favorite image editing software that has blending modes. Make a set of three circles, set the blend mode to multiply on each layer and overlap them and see what happens. You can try it for both RGB and CMY.
OK, I’ll try to give a true ELI5 explanation. It’s quite wordy, so bear with me.
Imagine that seeing colors is like playing ball. There’re 3 kinds of balls – red, green and blue. You can catch them separately – that would just give red, green and blue colors. You can catch them in pairs – it would give cyan, magenta and yellow colors. You can catch all three – getting the color white, and if you catch none – that would be black.
Now, screens have 3 very generous guys sitting in them – Red, Green and Blue. They have lifetime supplies of corresponding balls in their pockets and they’re ready to throw as much balls to you as you need. If you shout them “give me red” – the Red guy throws his ball. If you as for magenta – Red and Blue guys throw their balls to you. If you shout “I want white” – all three guys take action.
Each guy on the screen has his own position. They’re tiny, but if you look very closely you can actually see them individually. They **never** overlap.
Now, guys sitting in the paper are different. They have nothing in their pockets. They can only receive balls from somewhere else, take some and throw the rest back at you.
Imagine, that we use Red, Blue and Green guys on the paper. The Red guy receives three balls, takes blue and green and throws remaining red back at you, the Blue guys takes red and green balls, and throws blue one and the Green guy takes red and blue.
If you need magenta – you can put red and blue guys close together, like you do on the screen, and that would work.
But with paper we can actually do better! You see, on paper those guys **can** overlap – all three guys can take one spot on the field! At first that doesn’t seem that useful: if you put Red and Blue at one spot, the first will take blue and green balls and the second will take the remaining green. And you’ll receive nothing – color black. And any combination of those guys would produce the same result.
So, our RGB guys aren’t very cooperative on paper, aren’t they? But what if we swap them for different, more generous folks? Meet Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. Cyan only wants red for himself, throwing blue and green balls back at you. Magenta only cares about green balls and Yellow only cares about the blue ones.
Now see what happens if we put Cyan and Magenta in one spot. Cyan takes the red ball, Magenta takes the green ball. And we receive the blue one that none of them wanted. Now we can get 8 different ball combinations from one spot:
1. red + green + blue (white color) — if we put no one
2. green + blue — Cyan guy
3. red + blue — Magenta guy
4. red + green — Yellow guy
5. red — Yellow + Magenta
6. green — Yellow + Cyan
7. blue — Magenta + Cyan
8. none — all the guys together
And that is the reason why we use CYM instead of RGB for the paper
OK, I’ll try to give a true ELI5 explanation. It’s quite wordy, so bear with me.
Imagine that seeing colors is like playing ball. There’re 3 kinds of balls – red, green and blue. You can catch them separately – that would just give red, green and blue colors. You can catch them in pairs – it would give cyan, magenta and yellow colors. You can catch all three – getting the color white, and if you catch none – that would be black.
Now, screens have 3 very generous guys sitting in them – Red, Green and Blue. They have lifetime supplies of corresponding balls in their pockets and they’re ready to throw as much balls to you as you need. If you shout them “give me red” – the Red guy throws his ball. If you as for magenta – Red and Blue guys throw their balls to you. If you shout “I want white” – all three guys take action.
Each guy on the screen has his own position. They’re tiny, but if you look very closely you can actually see them individually. They **never** overlap.
Now, guys sitting in the paper are different. They have nothing in their pockets. They can only receive balls from somewhere else, take some and throw the rest back at you.
Imagine, that we use Red, Blue and Green guys on the paper. The Red guy receives three balls, takes blue and green and throws remaining red back at you, the Blue guys takes red and green balls, and throws blue one and the Green guy takes red and blue.
If you need magenta – you can put red and blue guys close together, like you do on the screen, and that would work.
But with paper we can actually do better! You see, on paper those guys **can** overlap – all three guys can take one spot on the field! At first that doesn’t seem that useful: if you put Red and Blue at one spot, the first will take blue and green balls and the second will take the remaining green. And you’ll receive nothing – color black. And any combination of those guys would produce the same result.
So, our RGB guys aren’t very cooperative on paper, aren’t they? But what if we swap them for different, more generous folks? Meet Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. Cyan only wants red for himself, throwing blue and green balls back at you. Magenta only cares about green balls and Yellow only cares about the blue ones.
Now see what happens if we put Cyan and Magenta in one spot. Cyan takes the red ball, Magenta takes the green ball. And we receive the blue one that none of them wanted. Now we can get 8 different ball combinations from one spot:
1. red + green + blue (white color) — if we put no one
2. green + blue — Cyan guy
3. red + blue — Magenta guy
4. red + green — Yellow guy
5. red — Yellow + Magenta
6. green — Yellow + Cyan
7. blue — Magenta + Cyan
8. none — all the guys together
And that is the reason why we use CYM instead of RGB for the paper
OK, I’ll try to give a true ELI5 explanation. It’s quite wordy, so bear with me.
Imagine that seeing colors is like playing ball. There’re 3 kinds of balls – red, green and blue. You can catch them separately – that would just give red, green and blue colors. You can catch them in pairs – it would give cyan, magenta and yellow colors. You can catch all three – getting the color white, and if you catch none – that would be black.
Now, screens have 3 very generous guys sitting in them – Red, Green and Blue. They have lifetime supplies of corresponding balls in their pockets and they’re ready to throw as much balls to you as you need. If you shout them “give me red” – the Red guy throws his ball. If you as for magenta – Red and Blue guys throw their balls to you. If you shout “I want white” – all three guys take action.
Each guy on the screen has his own position. They’re tiny, but if you look very closely you can actually see them individually. They **never** overlap.
Now, guys sitting in the paper are different. They have nothing in their pockets. They can only receive balls from somewhere else, take some and throw the rest back at you.
Imagine, that we use Red, Blue and Green guys on the paper. The Red guy receives three balls, takes blue and green and throws remaining red back at you, the Blue guys takes red and green balls, and throws blue one and the Green guy takes red and blue.
If you need magenta – you can put red and blue guys close together, like you do on the screen, and that would work.
But with paper we can actually do better! You see, on paper those guys **can** overlap – all three guys can take one spot on the field! At first that doesn’t seem that useful: if you put Red and Blue at one spot, the first will take blue and green balls and the second will take the remaining green. And you’ll receive nothing – color black. And any combination of those guys would produce the same result.
So, our RGB guys aren’t very cooperative on paper, aren’t they? But what if we swap them for different, more generous folks? Meet Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. Cyan only wants red for himself, throwing blue and green balls back at you. Magenta only cares about green balls and Yellow only cares about the blue ones.
Now see what happens if we put Cyan and Magenta in one spot. Cyan takes the red ball, Magenta takes the green ball. And we receive the blue one that none of them wanted. Now we can get 8 different ball combinations from one spot:
1. red + green + blue (white color) — if we put no one
2. green + blue — Cyan guy
3. red + blue — Magenta guy
4. red + green — Yellow guy
5. red — Yellow + Magenta
6. green — Yellow + Cyan
7. blue — Magenta + Cyan
8. none — all the guys together
And that is the reason why we use CYM instead of RGB for the paper
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