Color Printing

When you’re finished designing your marketing collateral and you need to get it printed, your commercial printer would most likely ask you if you want full color printing or not. And you should definitely say color printing. Then your commercial printer would again ask you a series of questions regarding full color printing. So now you’re getting a headache.

Let’s define color printing, shall we.

Color printing is a method used by commercial printers to reproduce an image or words in color. Obviously, it’s different from the process of printing your graphic and text in just black and white or even monochromatic printing.

There are two methods used in full color printing: there’s the four-color process and then there’s the six-color process. Both processes use CMYK as the primary ink colors. CMYK is the abbreviation for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The only difference between the two is that the six-color process added orange and green for a more vibrant and wider color range.

Then there’s ‘spot color’. Spot color is so named because commercial printers usually print these colors alone and without having to mix inks to produce the hues needed. Spot color has unlimited color inks available that’s why it is commonly used by most color printers for variety.

Color printing utilizes a series of processes until you get quality results from your color reproduction. There’s still a lot of stuff you need to know when reproducing a color image. But that’s another story.