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What colors of ink do color ink-jet printers use to produce a full range of colors?

Do the colors form by color addition or by color subtraction?

Public Comments

1. red, yellow, and blue silly! actually, i think fushia is the one only other color that can't be created by these three colors And by both reduction and addtion why?
2. Typically they use CMYK, which stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. When ever you are dealing with light that is not being omitted from an object, you are dealing with color subtraction. For instance, a blank piece of paper has no ink on it, so 100% of visible light is reflected off of it giving it a white appearance. After adding ink, portions of the spectrum of visible light are subtracted from what is reflected to you. Hence, you get color. The opposite is true for light-emitting sources like TV's and Computer Monitors. With these you are typically dealing with 3 LED's per pixel - one red, one green and one blue. When all are off you have black. When you turn all of the pixels on together you get white light. Turn off all but the red pixel and get red light. This is called additive color.
3. yeah, most just use yellow red blue. but my photo printer uses black, cyan, photo cyan, photo magenta, magenta, and yellow. with photos, there needs to be a light and dark blue and red, to get accurate colorings.
4. 1 BLACK 2 WHITE 3 ORANGE 4 VERMILLION 5 PRUSSIAN BLUE
5. the proper colour names are cyan, magenta, yellow and black. i no this cause i help buy these colours for my printer and fax. they are basically the three primary colours
6. ryb red yellow blue