Color printing yellow (minus-blue) overprinted by magenta (minus green) yields red. Where all three inks may overlap, almost all incident light is absorbed or subtracted, yielding near black, but in practical terms it is better and cheaper to use a separate black ink instead of combining three colored inks. The secondary or subtractive colors cyan, magenta and yellow may be considered "primary" by printers and watercolorists (whose basic inks and paints are transparent). Two graphic techniques are required to prepare images for four-color printing. In the "pre-press" stage, original images are translated into forms that can be used on a printing press,
Additive color Additive color Additive color is a method to create color by mixing a number of different light colors, with shades of red, green, and blue being the most common primary colors used in the additive color system. Additive color is in contrast to subtractive color, in which colors are created by subtracting (absorbing) parts of the spectrum of light present in ordinary white light, by means of colored pigments or dyes, such as those in paints, inks, and the three dye layers in typical color photographs on film. The combination of two of the standard three additive primary colors in