Why is the abbreviation of ‘Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black’ called ‘CMYK’ and not ‘CMYB’?
In: Technology
B is easily confused for blue (RGB color), so a different letter is used.
K also is generally understood to mean Key plate, (black provides sharp detail/contrast and is the most noticible color and so when someone is manually aligning different color plates it’s the most critical (key) one) though there’s a bit of argument as to if that’s really the case originally. There’s no definitive etymology on this.
In any case it’s likely a combination of these two factors that cemented K as meaning black in CMYK printing.
So the CMYK is referring to the plates of Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Key.
This key plate is usually the last plate, and is what provided the details via lines and contrast in black ink. You can look at a print and see how there’s usually not much in actual detail until the black key is used. As such it’s also the key for aligning the plates, as the others need to be aligned in relation to it, since if its off at all, the whole image will look wrong when the lines and contrast are laid down.
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