how color is printed
Full-color books are printed using a method called the “4-color process.” A book’s pages go through “color separation” to divide text and photographs into four separate plates: one for each color of ink that will be used to print the book.
The four colors are cyan blue (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y) and black (K). They are referred to as CMYK.
Even though you see many colors in a finished book, only these four ink colors are used to create it.
Here's how it works: Paper passes through a series of rollers: first yellow. The yellow plate prints only the parts of the image that include the color yellow, as shown above. Paper then passes through the magenta, cyan and black plates.
Our eyes combine the four ink layers and the result is full color.
photo: istockphoto
