From Design Into Print: Preparing Graphics and Text for Professional Printing

Chapter 9. Process Color Printing

If you read Chapter 5, you know all about the different modes of color on the computer. But this book is about getting pages printed, so you also need to know about how color is printed on the page. Printing presses use two basic methods.

One method is called “process color,” which creates the full-color images you are accustomed to seeing in magazines, posters, CD covers, etc. This method uses four separate, transparent inks that overlap each other to create all the colors you see. It’s expensive; four-color process is usually only attempted by large presses. The other method is “spot color,” which uses one color of ink from a tube of ink for each area you want colored on your page. I cover spot color in Chapter ...