What is CMYK in Printing?

The CMYK acronym stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key: those are the colours used in the printing process. A printing press uses dots of ink to make up the image from these four colours.

‘Key’ actually means black. It’s called Key because it’s the main colour used to determine the image outcome. Black ink provides depth and shading, whereas the other colours create different colours on the spectrum depending on how they are mixed. For example, cyan and yellow create a green when one is overlaid on the other.