subject: Four-color Printing [print this page] No longer will pictures of a baseball field show black and white grass. The days of family portraits printed in different shades of grey are over. Whether you're printing a document you created on your computer or a photograph you took with your digital camera, today's technology allows for quick and easy color printing.
Traditional color printing used a three color system based off of the three basic Primary colors: red, blue, and green. The use of these three colors gives the human eye the perception of all other colors, including white. For example, the combination of red and green gives eye a green sensation, while red and blue yields a purple hue.
There is, however, another form of printing that is used for mass reproduction, known as four-color printing. Items like newspapers, magazines, brochures, and pamphlets use four-color printing, also known as process printing, for bulk production. The four colors used in process printing are cyan, magenta, yellow and black. These colors are based from the aforementioned primary colors:
Cyan is considered minus red
Magenta is considered minus green
Yellow is considered minus blue
In order to create images with the four-color printing style, two techniques must be used. First, during the pre-press stage, certain processes are used to alter the original image into a form that is usable by the printing press. These processes are known as "color separation" and "screening." Color separation is basically a way of breaking down an image so that its colors are in a single-layer form. Screening, or halftoning, is a technique that presents continuous tones through the use of dots of varying size. The human eye will pick up these dots as a joint image. These two processes lead to the creating of printing plates, which are used as a guide on printing presses to create uniform images.
Modern technology allows for a wide range of possibilities. This idea holds true in the world of printing. People always say that a picture is worth a thousand words. With four color printing, a picture may be worth ten thousand words. Whether you're looking for letterhead printing or an image of your family on vacation, the clarity and cleanliness that comes from process printing will allow for a crystal clear image.
by: Ken Kenison
welcome to Insurances.net (https://www.insurances.net)
