Illustrated Glossary: Printing Colors | DP3: Digital Print Preservation Portal

Basic CMY

In order to create color prints, all hardcopy systems use a small number of hues that when mixed in varying proportions can simulate a wide range of possible colors. Unfortunately, the range of reproducible colors from a print system can never truly match the entire range of colors in the world. What any given colorant set can produce is called its color gamut. Print systems with a wide gamut can produce a large number of colors while those with a narrow gamut produce fewer. The smallest set of colors used in printing is called CMY which stands for cyan, magenta, and yellow. The two digital print systems that use this approach are digitally-exposed chromogenic photography and most dye sublimation.

Row of three circles in cyan, magenta, and yellow.

Basic CMYK

Inkjet, electrophotography, and a very small number of dye sublimation systems use CMYK as their basic color set, where K stands for Black. These systems produce a broader range of colors but most importantly produce text well, which is usually just black. Chromogenic and dye sublimation are not intended to be used for text printing, so a true black isn’t really necessary.

Row of four circles in black, cyan, magenta, and yellow.

Photo Colors

Because inkjet and digital electrophotography are halftone systems, they must use dots to reproduce images. To create light image areas, the dots have to be smaller or further apart. In the lightest tones, this degrades image quality. Manufacturers solved this by including light cyan and light magenta colors which allows dots to be larger or closer together. Note that yellow does not need a light version as it is already very light. Sometimes manufactures have also included greys to improve grey tones from light to dark.

Row of six circles in black, cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan, and light magenta.

Black-and-White Ink Sets

Along the same lines as above, some manufactures have produced ink sets with a very large range of greys to make very high quality black-and-white inkjet prints.

Row of seven circles in black and various shades of grey. The circles progress from dark to light grey.

Extended Color Sets

Because CMYK, even with light versions of cyan, magenta, and greys, has a limited color gamut, some manufactures have added additional colors to their ink sets to further improve image quality. These can include red, orange, green, blue, or violet.

Row of five circles in red, orange, green, blue, and violet.

Spot Colors

Finally, in digital presses, some customers’ needs for particular colors have led press manufacturers to create unique colors for specific print jobs and applications. An example would be a corporate logo that needed to be an exact match to their other printed materials. This could call for a specific maroon or a unique yellow. These spot colors would only be used on specific jobs and would not be included as a regular color in all print jobs.