THE PROS AND CONS OF USING A FOUR COLOR PROCESS
There are so many articles written about the four color process
but the question on its usefulness still requires further
explanation. There are actually three primary colors of light
that the human eyes perceive and these are red, blue and green.
So why create a four color scheme? Although the three colors can
already come up with various color mixes but the problem with
the combined colors is that it is never great when it comes to
printing on papers. And so technology calls for the creation of
colors that can solve the problem of printing on papers thus the
creation of CMYK which stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and
black.
The combination of any of the four colors would result to the
three colors of red, blue and green. Just how is this achieved?
Well, in order to come up with the yellow color, the colors red
and green are processed. The black color is the outcome of the
combination of the other three processed colors. The importance
of black in printing is that it adds intensity to printed
images.
The crude way of printing images or pictures is to break it into
its four color components by the use of a process camera as well
as four filters. The process camera is a special type of camera
which is designed for copying flat art. It makes used of a high
resolution flat field lens used to take pictures of flat
objects. The process camera also works well for line shots
images that have no gray tones, halftones or color separations.
On the other hand the filter to be use requires fine screen made
up of dots. Individual screens are used to filter the four
colors. After which the film would then be process and then
printed on a metal plate that is specially designed for such
purpose. The next step would require placing of the metal plate
on the printing press.
However, the four color process is not without flaws. Most of
the common problems encountered with the use of four color
process is the difficulty in creating vibrant colors
specifically when it comes to the colors red and violet. Another
drawback is the expensive cost of correcting colors. An example
of an error in color is when images appear too dark. However,
the quality of colors is also dependent on the type of paper
used. The difference in the quality of colors is imminent
especially when applied in a textured and high quality
reflective paper. The high quality reflective paper is best
preferred since it reflects the real quality of the colors. And
also there are instances wherein images looks good in prepress
or during the proofing stage but looks terrible when printed.
The used of water when mixing inks also results to images that
are not of good quality. There is also the tendency for the
plates to be accidentally moved from the press which would
certainly mess up the colors.
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Color Printing