Color

Color is the perceptual characteristic of light described by color. Colors can be mixed in any color ink you like, you will just be charged for the cost of the special ink. An additional color used in your design is called a flat color, match color or most commonly the spot color. PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM (PMS): The pantone matching system is an industry-standard with a collection of over 1000 colors that printers use. The easiest way to specify a color to the printer is to give the Pantone number. CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black. CMYK is a subtractive color model used in color printing, and works through light absorption. RGB: is another system of defining color. Comes from three primary colors, Red, Green and Blue. RGB is commonly used for the display of colors on a television or computer's moniter. Each pixel on the screen can be represented in the computer or interface hardware (eg. a graphics card) as values for red, green and blue. These values are converted into intensities which are then used for displays. On a computer screen or television at standard viewing people cannot distinguish more than a few hundred hues. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ SPOT COLOR- In offset printing, a spot color is any color generated by an ink (pure or mixed) that is printed in a single run. The offset printing process is composed of four spot colors: CMYK PROCESS COLOR: Process color is the shortened term for "four-color printing process" Other ways of referring to this printing process include four color, CMYK, full process and full color. The FOUR-COLOR printing process uses four standard ink colors: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. "K" in CMYK which is black represents the "Key". Using black ink provides shadow detail and reduces the amout of primary colors needed to print dark hues. The four-color process also relies on "halftoning", which converts an image into a moasic of tiny solid dots. The dots can be seen by maganifying a black and white photograph printed in a newspaper. With four-color printing halftoning allows lighter shades of the primary colors to be printed. . Whithout halftoning the three primary process colors could be printed only as solid blocks of coulor and would only produce six shades. The THREE PROCESS-COLOR inks are primary colors. Theoretically the primary colors produce all other colors. Cyan is a bright bluish-green, magenta is a bright purplish-red, yellow is a bright yellow. These colors are subtractive primaries, which means when combined they absorb all light theoretically resulting in black. This is contrasted when you add the primary colors red, blue and green; when added form the white light. Printers do not like to have flat colors overlapping, because it slows the rate of drying the inks and may the product may smudge. Adjacent areas of flat color will need to overlap to a small extent to all for misregistration. This is called trapping. In Illustrator or Freehand ***If you are working in full color alway convert imported Pantone colors to CMYK**** right away. In paint programmes like photoshop work in RGB until you've nearly finished then convert to CMYK. This will keep your file size down and faster.