dye color |
absorbs |
reflects |
|---|---|---|
cyan |
red |
blue and green |
magenta |
green |
blue and red |
yellow |
blue |
red and green |
black |
all |
none |
To produce blue, one would mix cyan and magenta inks, as they both reflect blue while each absorbing one of green and red. Unfortunately, inks also interact in non-linear ways. This makes the process of converting a given monitor color to an equivalent printer color a challenging problem.
Black ink is used to ensure that a high quality black can always be printed, and is often referred to as to K. Printers thus use a CMYK color model.