CMYK Printing
Full-colour CMYK printing, a.k.a. the 4-colour process, uses four ink colours. By combining Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, you can create any number of colours to bring your project to life.
But you may want to use CMYK to produce Rich Black instead of Standard black, as it isn’t quite dark enough.
We sometimes have requests to include a few black and white pages within a colour-printed item. But it’s more cost-effective to print your black and white pages in rich black with CMYK rather than printing specific pages separately in black ink.
Black (K) Only Printing
The K in CMYK represents the Black ink. If you are printing in black and white only, then you are printing with just the K ink. We won't print with the Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow inks.
When preparing your files for print, there are several things to consider, such as ink saturation and whether or not standard black or rich black is better suited to your project. Factors like these may also influence your choice of paper type and finish.
Printing in black and white is cheaper than printing in colour. Printed standard black produced using only the K ink, however, will not appear as intensely as Rich Black, which combines Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, offering more vivid results.
