CMYK Printing

Technique

The four- and six-color printing processes are less popular, yet highly effective t-shirt printing techniques. The traditional method of doing this is to photograph an image three times using each of the three primary color filters- red, green and blue. This gives three images, each made entirely of their respective primary colors. Negatives of these are then produced; the red yields a cyan image, green yields magenta, and blue makes a yellow negative. These three negatives are then combined to reproduce the original image, building it from scratch in a sense. Since there is no real dark element, black is also used for a total of four colors: cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK- "B" is used to designate the color blue). Sometimes green and orange are also used for more balance in the darker part of the image, resulting in a six-color print.

Choosing Your Printing Process

CMYK printing is ideal for printing photograph images onto shirts, since it is commonly used in film development. We offer this type of printing by request only. If you would like us to print your shirt using the CMYK process, be sure to designate that in the additional information section. Be mindful that there is an extra fee associated with this process. You won't be hit too hard though, because we already keep our prices so low. Depending on the nature of the image you are looking to print on your shirt, consider which printing process you would prefer: CMYK, digital printing, or screen printing. While we will choose the best option for each individual order, you can always call and discuss your options if you're interested.