Cyan is the color between blue and green on the visible spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a predominant wavelength between 500 and 520 nm, between the wavelengths of green and blue.
The CMYK color model is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation CMYK refers to the four ink plates used: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black).
A set of primary colors or primary colours consists of colorants or colored lights that can be mixed in varying amounts to produce a gamut of colors. This is the essential method used to create the perception of a broad range of colors in, e.g., electronic displays, color printing, and paintings. Perceptions associated with a given combination of primary colors can be predicted by an appropriate mixing model that reflects the physics of how light interacts with physical media, and ultimately the retina. The most common color mixing models are the additive primary colors and the subtractive primary colors.
Magenta is a purplish-red color. On color wheels of the RGB (additive) and CMY (subtractive) color models, it is located precisely midway between blue and red. It is one of the four colors of ink used in color printing by an inkjet printer, along with yellow, cyan, and black to make all the other colors. The tone of magenta used in printing, printer's magenta, is redder than the magenta of the RGB (additive) model, the former being closer to rose.
Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively charged cylinder called a "drum" to define a differentially charged image. The drum then selectively collects electrically charged powdered ink (toner), and transfers the image to paper, which is then heated to permanently fuse the text, imagery, or both, to the paper. As with digital photocopiers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process. Laser printing differs from traditional xerography as implemented in analog photocopiers in that in the latter, the image is formed by reflecting light off an existing document onto the exposed drum.
A page printer is a computer printer which processes and prints a whole page at a time, as opposed to printers which print one line or character at a time such as line printers and dot-matrix printers. Page printers are often all incorrectly termed “laser printers”—although virtually all laser printers are page printers, other page printing technologies also exist.
Pantone LLC is an American limited liability company headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, and best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, notably graphic design, fashion design, product design, printing, and manufacturing and supporting the management of color from design to production, in physical and digital formats, among coated and uncoated materials, cotton, polyester, nylon and plastics.
In color reproduction and colorimetry, a gamut, or color gamut, is a convex set containing the colors that can be accurately represented, i.e. reproduced by an output device or measured by an input device. Devices with a larger gamut can represent more colors. Similarly, gamut may also refer to the colors within a defined color space, which is not linked to a specific device. A trichromatic gamut is often visualized as a color triangle. A less common usage defines gamut as the subset of colors contained within an image, scene or video.
Subtractive color or subtractive color mixing predicts the spectral power distribution of light after it passes through successive layers of partially absorbing media. This idealized model is the essential principle of how dyes and pigments are used in color printing and photography, where the perception of color is elicited after white light passes through microscopic "stacks" of partially absorbing media allowing some wavelengths of light to reach the eye and not others, and also in painting, whether the colors are mixed or applied in successive layers.
Xerography is a dry photocopying technique. Originally called electrophotography, it was renamed xerography—from the Greek roots ξηρόςxeros, meaning "dry" and -γραφία-graphia, meaning "writing"—to emphasize that unlike reproduction techniques then in use such as cyanotype, the process of xerography used no liquid chemicals.
Digital printing is a method of printing from a digital-based image directly to a variety of media. It usually refers to professional printing where small-run jobs from desktop publishing and other digital sources are printed using large-format and/or high-volume laser or inkjet printers.
Offset printing is a common printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket and then to the printing surface. When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on the repulsion of oil and water, the offset technique employs a flat (planographic) image carrier. Ink rollers transfer ink to the image areas of the image carrier, while a water roller applies a water-based film to the non-image areas.
Color printing or colour printing is the reproduction of an image or text in color.
Gum printing is a way of making photographic reproductions without the use of silver halides. The process uses salts of dichromate in common with a number of other related processes such as sun printing.
LightJet is a brand of hardware used for photographic printing of digital images to photographic paper and film. LightJet printers are no longer manufactured but are however remanufactured and resold; and their lasers are still manufactured.
CcMmYK, sometimes referred to as CMYKLcLm or CMYKcm, is a six-color printing process used in some inkjet printers optimized for photo printing. It complements the more common four color CMYK process, which stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black), by adding light cyan and light magenta. Individually, light cyan is often abbreviated to Lc or c, and light magenta is represented as Lm or m.
Inkjet paper is a special fine paper designed for inkjet printers, typically classified by its weight, brightness and smoothness, and sometimes by its opacity.
Specifications for Web Offset Publications, invariably abbreviated to SWOP, is an organization and the name of a set of specifications that it produces, with the aim of improving the consistency and quality of professionally printed material in the United States, and of certain other products, programs and endorsements related to their work. Among other things, the organization specifies SWOP inks used in CMYK printing, colors of SWOP proofs, other physical qualities pertaining to printing. The organization publishes its own specification and ICC profile and runs a certification program.
There are three types of color mixing models, depending on the relative brightness of the resultant mixture: additive, subtractive, and average. In these models, mixing black and white will yield white, black and gray, respectively. Physical mixing processes, e.g. mixing light beams or oil paints, will follow one or a hybrid of these 3 models. Each mixing model is associated with several color models, depending on the approximate primary colors used. The most common color models are optimized to human trichromatic color vision, therefore comprising three primary colors.
The color magenta has notable tints and shades. These various colors are shown below.
Color coordinates