Color model or "CMYK" color space. The cyan ink absorbs red light but transmits green and blue, the magenta ink absorbs green light but transmits red and blue, and the yellow ink absorbs blue light but transmits red and green. The white substrate reflects the transmitted light back to the viewer. Because in practice the CMY inks suitable for printing also reflect a little bit of color, making a deep and neutral black impossible, the K (black ink) component, usually printed last, is needed to compensate for their deficiencies. Use of a separate black ink is also economically driven when a lot
Color printing series of steps, or transformations, to generate a quality color reproduction. The following sections focus on the steps used when reproducing a color image in CMYK printing, along with some historical perspective. Woodblock printing on textiles preceded printing on paper in both East Asia and Europe, and the use of different blocks to produce patterns in color was common. The earliest way of adding color to items printed on paper was by hand-coloring, and this was widely used for printed images in both Europe and East Asia. Chinese woodcuts have this from at least the 13th century, and European ones