A printing method in which a color image is separated into 4 different colors – cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow and black (the k in cmyk) – and when transferred to printing plates and printed on a printing press with those colored inks, the original color image is reproduced. Most of the entire spectrum of colors can be reproduced with just these four process ink colors – called “four color printing” – and is universally used in the graphic arts and commercial printing industry for the reproduction of color images and text.
use it in real life: Let’s say you are printing a brochure with a color photo on it using the four color process method. In order to reproduce the photo, it will need to be scanned, then broken down into percentages of cyan, magenta, yellow and black that when layered in ink on the press will actually re-create the color photo.
See also: four-color process