Which color mode uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black for printing?

• A. RGB color mode
• B. Grayscale
• C. LAB color mode
• D. CMYK color mode

Answer: (D)

Printing relies on subtractive color mixing, where inks absorb light to create colors. The standard print color system uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black to build a wide range of tones and provide deep, neutral blacks. This CMYK setup matches how physical inks behave on paper, so it’s the go-to color mode for printing workflows. By contrast, RGB combines red, green, and blue light and is used for screens (an additive model). Grayscale uses only shades of gray, lacking color, and LAB is a perceptual color space used mainly in editing and color management, often converted to CMYK for printing. So the color mode that uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black for printing is CMYK.