Oki 8c Plus - Manual (Page 9)

Colour Guide 9
English
In theory, a combination of the three subtractive primaries
will produce black. In practice however, pigments used in
inks are not perfect and usually give rise to a dark green/
brown. For this reason, in many colour output devices, a
separate black ink is used to produce greys and black (in
shadows and black text for example). This is the CMYK
model and is the method most widely used in the colour
printing and printer industry. The OKIPAGE 8c Plus uses separate
cartridges of cyan, magenta, yellow and black toner to
generate high definition colour images for the workgroup or
networked environment.
Neutral Colours
Although the term ‘colour’ is applied, neutral colours do not
have properties of hue or saturation. They are described in
terms of lightness only. The neutral colours are black and
white and all shades of grey in between. A balanced mix of
cyan, magenta and yellow yields a neutral colour or black
(in theory). The same effect can be achieved with the additive
primaries by having an equal mix of red, green and blue light.
Colour Complements
Complements are pairs of colours that combine to produce a
neutral colour. It can be seen from the above that balanced
quantities of all three primaries produce a neutral. Mixing
two primaries produces a secondary colour. Mixing this
secondary colour with the remaining primary colour produces
a neutral colour. For example:
CYAN + MAGENTA + YELLOW = NEUTRAL
— red (magenta + yellow) + cyan = NEUTRAL
— green (yellow + cyan) + magenta = NEUTRAL
— blue (cyan + magenta) + yellow = NEUTRAL
This relationship can be applied to all colours and is shown
in more detail in the following section.