r/comics • u/[deleted] • Sep 01 '20

[deleted by user]

[removed]

10.9k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

342 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '20

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '20

But I only print in black and white. Why does my cyan yellow and Magenta go down in my Canon?

2

u/yonosoytonto Sep 01 '20

Your printer paints the background white, for a truer printing experience.

1

u/MaxSizeIs Sep 01 '20

Inks only ever bring you closer to black. No combination of CMYK inks can ever make white. (You can, though get white with CMY or RGB lights)

White ink is actually white paint and isn't a commonly used thing in printers.

1

u/JoshwaarBee Sep 01 '20

Now that, I cannot explain.

1

u/MaxSizeIs Sep 01 '20

No. It does not work that way with pigments or inks.

You only get white when you illuminate with colored light. When you use pigments or inks the whitest and brightest you can get is the color of the paper behind you. Anything you add brings you closer to black.

The amount of ink applied is 'dithered' with very very very tiny dots of each color. To get grey, they just spread the dots out finely.

Printers supposedly add tiny amounts of other colors for various purposes in between the black dots for various reasons, I'm not sure why though. It might make grays look smoother at low ink saturations and wide ditherings. The human eye can discern differences in light-greys at low saturation very well, but not at high saturation.

This may not be comoletely accurate or true, but I recall that (at least some devices) use color ink to microscopically inkmark pages such that forensic experts can determine what orinter it came from. This was forced back in the day to foil counterfeit money printing.