Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the three primary colors in this color space. Red, green and blue are the secondaries. Theoretically black is not needed. However, when full-saturation cyan, magenta, and yellow inks are mixed equally on paper, the result is usually a dark brown, rather than black. Therefore, black ink is overprinted in darker areas to give a better appearance.
CMYK colors vary with printer, ink, and paper characteristics.
In addition, different devices have different gamuts, or ranges of colors that they can produce. Because the colors produced by both RGB and CMYK specifications vary from device to device, they are called device-dependent color spaces. Conversion from an RGB color space to a CMYK color space involves a number of variables. ColorSync performs these calculations for the user when converting among color spaces. Inc. All rights reserved.