Why new color printers use CMYK color instead of RGB?

The answer is actually pretty straight forward and easily explained with a few pictures. Additive vs. Subractive. The first thing to understand about colors is the difference between being additive and subtractive. This will help us understand why monitors use RGB and printers us CMYK. read more

Color printing all started with the CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and key or black) color formats, but the combination has inconsistencies, so other combinations were developed. Aside from the regular four, six, eight and twelve are now available in ink and toner store color laser printer outlets. read more

Lucky for most of us, printing RGB files on a CMYK printer is not going to drastically misrepresent the colors of the image, but sometimes the color mismatch can be noticeable. The most common mismatch is usually with Blues looking more Purple. With the color wheels shown above, the CMYK color wheel was created by directly converting the RGB color wheel into CMYK. read more