From the course: Digital Media Foundations

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Printers prefer CMYK

Printers prefer CMYK

From the course: Digital Media Foundations

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Printers prefer CMYK

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- [Instructor] Printers use subtractive color. The presumption is that the paper's white which contains all colors, so selectively hiding the colors we don't want reveals the ones we do. It's a bit like putting a colored gel over a white light bulb. If the bulb is white, and you put a blue filter over it, you just see the blue light. That is, you'll see the blue part of the light emitted by the light bulb. The filter doesn't exactly modify the light. It just hides everything except the color you want to see. This means that technically, the filter isn't actually blue. It's every color except blue. It's hiding every color except that one. The cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks printers use work on the same principle. Though, of course, instead of covering up a white light bulb, they cover up white paper. You can interfere with this process by using colored paper, of course, though this would inevitably be a little bit hit and miss. There's a black ink in addition to cyan, magenta and…

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