What Color Can Do For You

When you hear the terms, four-color or full color process, it means you are able to produce any color combination. Four-color process is a system where an image is separated into four different color values with the inks cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow and black to reproduce the original color image.

If your budget prohibits this quality of color reproduction, be aware that many cost-effective opportunities exist to add “punch” to your printed materials. Designers often manipulate color to create interest and variety from a single image. Following are a few terms to help you know your color options.

Glossary of Terms

• Spot color - Adding one or more single flat colors to a printed piece. You can also create monochromatic (single color) photos.
• Halftone - A pattern of dots of different sizes used to simulate a continuous-tone photograph, either in color or black and white.
• Duotone - Created by printing a photographic image in two colors. They often possess greater depth and warmth than photos printed in one color. Most are printed using a hue naturally dark in color (i.e. black or blue) and a naturally light hue (i.e. gray or yellow).
• Tritone - A halftone using three colors to produce more contrast and detail than a duotone.
• Mezzotint - Computer-generated reproduction of an engraver’s method which creates various textures and patterns to create artistic effects.
• Posterized - The color palette of an image is manipulated and recreated using only flat colors.
• Traps - Trapping is a term that describes the method used to make two colors fit together perfectly without any white gaps between them.
• Screens - Varying the screen percentage can give you the illusion of printing with multiple colors. For example, a 50 percent screen of a solid red creates the illusion of pink.