Color on a printed page is technically different from the color of a house or a car, for instance. Where house and car paints make use of primary colors mixed together, printing colors are based on transparent secondary colors to create the primary colors. For color printers using the CMYK four-color process printing can create the whole range of colors using cyan, magenta and yellow. Black is also added to the mix, as the black produced by overlapping cyan, magenta and yellow is not black enough. There is another printing process which uses 6 colors, which adds orange and green to the CMYK. This method makes the colors more vibrant.
The use of 4-color and 6-color process has also been used not just in industrial printing processes but also in color printers for the home and office, as well as large format printers. The typical color printer uses a 4 color process, either through the use of 2 or 4 ink cartridges. High end printers, however, use 6-color cartridges. As with industrial printers, the use of 6 colors give better color rendition from the desktop.