How many colors can be printed?

[Craig]

Someone actually asked me how many colors can be printed from the CMYK color space. I have no clue....anyone know???

[Luc St-Pierre]

In theory, around 10,000,000 shades can be obtained with 4 inks. Since the CMYK has limitations, all these shades are compressed into the CMYK gamut. To make a long story short, none of these 10,000,000 shades will be a bright orange, a limy green or a down-deep purple. So the question is tricky in that sense. Many shades but a very “ordinary” gamut in the end.

[Craig]

Thanks... I knew someone had that bit of useless knowledge floating around!

[rbailleu]

kind of depends on what you call a distinct color if you have 256 shades of each of the 4 colors
thats 4.3 billion colors again some limitations may apply. not valid with any other offer.

[ColorGeek]

I've always found it beneficial to use a gamut viewer to help illustrate the gamut of any given device. I use ColorThink Pro to do gamut comparisons of different color spaces using ICC profiles. It's very graphic and easily understood by sales people, CSR's, and clients. You can even drag images into the gamut plot and it will plot points of the colors in the image showing out-of-gamut colors - very useful!

[michaelejahn]

I guess I just wanted to point out that as all CMYK output devices are not equal, you may discover that when compared to many offset heatset printing press work, that - depending on the vendor and the condition of the device, the amount of color difference may vary quite widely.

Hope this helps.

[Craig]

I think a round about number of 10,000,000 will do just fine! Thanks for all the info guys!!