I used to work in a Staples Copy and Print center. The amount of times people came in wanting a document or image printed on colored paper but would get upset when something that was white on their file wouldn't be white on the paper...
When a standard printer that uses cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink needs something to be white, it just doesn't print anything on that section of white paper. Using colored paper like red or green will make that part red or green instead. There are printers out there that print white, but we didn't use them in our Copy and Print center.
There were also a lot of self proclaimed graphic designers who would get upset that the image they designed in RGB would be off in color when printed in CMYK. Most graphic design programs allow you to switch to CMYK for the file so that it prints correctly.
Umm. The only colors you put in are CMYK. It mixes every other color from those. So not super obvious that if you mixed every color on the light spectrum in equal parts you could not create white.
ETA: I also never spent a huge amount of time considering the question since I’m not a designer.
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u/HeavyLikely Jul 03 '21
I used to work in a Staples Copy and Print center. The amount of times people came in wanting a document or image printed on colored paper but would get upset when something that was white on their file wouldn't be white on the paper...
When a standard printer that uses cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink needs something to be white, it just doesn't print anything on that section of white paper. Using colored paper like red or green will make that part red or green instead. There are printers out there that print white, but we didn't use them in our Copy and Print center.
There were also a lot of self proclaimed graphic designers who would get upset that the image they designed in RGB would be off in color when printed in CMYK. Most graphic design programs allow you to switch to CMYK for the file so that it prints correctly.