There’s No Such Thing As The Colour Pink

Thats also why we have different colour systems for screens vs printers. Printers use a subtractive colour model CMYK – cyan, magenta, yellow, black (note: the K is not the K in the word “black”, it refers to the alignment of colours against the Key plate which is black). As Chris points out,the combination of those colours allows light to be reflected off the page or not. Adding the CMY together produces black! Effectively because paper is white, you are simply removing (subtracting) the brightness of the white.

RGB (Red Green Blue) is an additive model used for screens, where adding these colours together produces other colours. In fact adding Red Green Blue together gives white (the opposite of the CMYK system). So in the RGB model black is the lack of light i.e. where no light is being emitted by the screen.

Getting back to CMYK, the black is added to save the cost of ink and produce better dark and blacker tones.

For CMYK to work the process of Halftoning (aka screening is used). This is where tiny dots of each primary color are printed in a pattern small enough that the human eye perceives a solid color. Magenta printed with a 20% halftone, for example, produces a pink color, because the eye perceives the tiny magenta dots and the white paper between the dots as lighter and less saturated than the color of pure magenta ink.

Now you can enjoy looking at paper and screens with the knowledge that there is some fascinating physics going on. You might look at the world a little differently….or not. :-)