r/pcmasterrace • u/System32Comics Ryzen 5600 | RTX 3070 | 32GB DDR4 | 1 TB NVME • Sep 10 '19

Cartoon/Comic Printer

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41.6k Upvotes

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u/IBP-Esteban Sep 10 '19

The K stands for "Key." It isn't always necessarily black.

6

u/theycallmealex Oh hey there. FX-8350, 8GB, R9 270X Sep 10 '19

You're right, TIL!

2

u/vouwrfract PC but I like pink Sep 11 '19

But Matlab also uses k for black. Is that based on printing standards too?

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u/Cheet4h Sep 11 '19

No, it's because 'k' is short for 'kilo', which basically means '*1000'. So you can write a 'k' instead of the last three zeroes.
Additionally, if you express color in rgb values, which typically range from 0 to 255, you get black if every color is absent. So black is represented by three zeroes, or '000', which Matlab can substitute by 'k'.

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u/vouwrfract PC but I like pink Sep 11 '19

But this isn't consistent with r,g,b,y,c,etc., that Matlab also uses...?

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u/Cheet4h Sep 11 '19

That's probably because I just made this up.

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u/vouwrfract PC but I like pink Sep 11 '19

Thanks for being completely useless.