Color Information

When building an ad for printing on a four color press all colors must be CMYK. This includes images used in the ad (that may have been created in a different application such as Adobe Photoshop), and any color used for type, background gradients, or elements such as bursts or borders.

What is CMYK Color?

(C) Cyan, (M) Magenta, (Y) Yellow, (K) Black. The four colors used by conventional four-color presses to create images that, to the naked eye, appear to be full color. They represent the subtractive color model, where a combination of 100% of each component yields black and 0% of each yields white. Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the subtractive complements of red, green, and blue respectively.The printing process itself is referred to as four-color process.

Set an image to CMYK in Adobe Photoshop

Set a graphic or text to CMYK in QuarkXPress

Set a graphic or text to CMYK in Adobe Indesign

Other Color spaces

Some other common color spaces are RGB and Spot color.

RGB Color:

Acronym for red–green–blue. A model for describing colors that are produced by emitting light, as on a video monitor, rather than by absorbing it, as with ink on paper. Adding no color produces black; adding 100 percent of all three colors results in white. RGB colors have to be converted before printing on a four-color press.

Spot Color:

Spot colors are printed with special premixed inks, used instead of, or in addition to, CMYK inks (process colors). Spot color printing requires a separate plate for every spot color, whereas process color printing only uses four plates, one for each of the four basic CMYK colors. Spot colors are especially well suited for offset printing, but should be used with caution when creating documents for four-color printing.

More Information

Learn more about different color spaces. Visit Digital Expert

Set an image to CMYK in Adobe Photoshop.

  1. Open the image to be converted
  2. From the "Image" menu select "Mode", from the flyout menu select "CMYK".
  3. Save your changes.

PhotoShop CYMK

Set a graphic or text to CMYK in QuarkXPress

To make your Color Palette default to CMYK, the following steps need to be done with no ads open.

  1. From the "Edit" menu select "Colors..."
  2. Select a color and click the "Edit" button. Note: Basic colors like Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black cannot be edited.
  3. Set the "Model" pop-up menu to "CMYK", and be sure the "Spot Color" check box is unchecked.
  4. Click "OK" to apply your changes, then "Save" to close the "Default Colors" window.

Quark Xpress CMYK

The Color Palattes in preexisting ads will have to be opened and their colors will have to be edited individually. First open the ad, then follow steps 1-4 above. Each ad has unique palatte, so this process has to done for every ad.

Set a graphic or text to CMYK in Adobe Indesign

  1. Start by viewing the "Swatches" palatte. It can be opened by going to the "Windows" menu and selecting "Swatches".
  2. Double click on the color you want to edit.
  3. Set the "Color Type" to "Process", and the "Color Mode" to "CMYK". Then click "OK".