| CMY (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) is a subtractive color system used by printers and photographers to render colors with ink or emulsion. When illuminated, each of the three colors absorbs its complementary light color. Cyan absorbs red; magenta absorbs green; and yellow absorbs blue. By increasing the amount of yellow ink, for instance, the amount of blue in the image is increased. |
| The model is subtractive: each color is created by starting with white and subtracting the given amount of cyan, magenta, and yellow. |
| In real life, the colors are created by mixing inks and true black is difficult to produce by adding all the colors; it turns out a dark brown. For this reason, black is treated as a separate component, the fourth component, K. |
| Colors may be given as a color triple as in RGB, except that (0, 0, 0) is white and (255, 255, 255) is (theoretically) black. The colors may also be given as percentages of 100. |