Why does offset printing use black ink in addition to CMY?
Printing black by overlaying cyan, yellow and magenta ink in offset printing has three major problems. First, coloured ink is expensive. Replacing coloured ink by black ink – which is primarily carbon – makes economic sense. Second, printing three ink layers causes the printed paper to become quite wet. If three inks can be replaced by one, the ink will dry more quickly, the press can be run faster, and the job will be less expensive. Third, if black is printed by combining three inks, and mechanical tolerances cause the three inks to be printed slightly out of register, then black edges will suffer coloured tinges. Vision is most demanding of spatial detail in black and white areas. Printing black with a single ink minimizes the visibility of registration errors. Other printing processes may or may not be subject to similar constraints.
