What is CMYK?


Well, this is a good starter to understand how the printing works on the t shirt. For the people like us who do not know anything about the printing world, this is the first step to embark the “journey” into the world of t shirt printing. CMYK refers to the four inks used in some color printing which is known as cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black).

The CMYK color model is also known as process color which consists of those four color. CMYK is a subtractive color model and indeed be used in widely in color printing and also used to describe the printing process itself. The CMYK model works by partially or entirely masking colors on a lighter, usually white, background. The ink reduces the light that would otherwise be reflected. Such a model is called subtractive because inks "subtract" brightness from white.

There is one process that involved in the CMYK model. The first one is known as haftoning process. Of course with CMYK printing, halftoning (also called screening) allows for less than full saturation of the primary colours. The tiny dots of each primary colour are printed in a pattern small enough that human beings perceive a solid colour. Magenta printed with a 20% halftone, for example, produces a pink colour, because the eye perceives the tiny magenta dots on the large white paper as lighter and less saturated than the colour of pure magenta ink. Without halftoning, the three primary process colours could be printed only as solid blocks of colour, and therefore could produce only seven colours: the three primaries themselves, plus three secondary colours produced by layering two of the primaries: cyan and yellow produce green, cyan and magenta produce blue, yellow and magenta produce red (these subtractive secondary colours correspond roughly to the additive primary colours plus layering all three of them resulting in black.  Thus by using halftoning, a full continuous range of colours can be produced.

To improve print quality and reduce moiré patterns, the screen for each colour is set at a different angle. While the angles depend on how many colours are used and the preference of the press operator, typical CMYK process printing uses any of the following screen angles.


To sum up, this model is actually necessary for the t shirt printing. With this model as the reference, the combination colour for the t shirt printing can be produced widely.
Souce: Wikipedia
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