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
