4C (CMYK) Printing is the industry standard for producing full-color images. It works by layering four specific ink colors in varying intensities to create a vast spectrum of shades. Inks used in CMYK printing come in 4 colors: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (a printer’s name for black, since black is often used to outline an image as a guide). CMYK inks are applied in set patterns of tiny dots that appear to create a solid color similar to the pixels on a digital image. Layers of these dots in different amounts of ink create any shade or color. Here’s an example of how the colors work together:

Example of 4C (CMYK) printing: