Daily Dose of DTP: 19. How Many Colors?

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Daily Dose of DTP 19. How Many Colors? From Jacci Howard Bear, your Guide to Desktop Publishing A concept that confuses many who are new to desktop publishing is that color printing done on a printing press is vastly different from printing to your inkjet printer. It's not just the appearance of the color but the process of getting the ink on the paper. Printing presses just work in a different way. Before we get into all that, I'm going to introduce you to two different kinds of color: CMYK and Spot Color. Although we are discussing these in terms of prepress and printing, the kind of color you use affects everything about your document from printing costs to individual page layout to how you assemble your publication. Class Notes: This is not simply a word-a-day course. The lessons follow a specific order in roughly the following groupings: General concepts > Things you need > Font specifics > Image specifics > Prepress & Printing > Rules & Tutorials (bold indicates the stage in which this lesson falls) Today's Definitions CMYK Y? Because I like You... Spot Color In the United States, the dominant spot color printing system is the PANTONE Matching System, which is why you'll often hear spot color referred to as PMS. Today's Trivia What Happened to the Color Wheel? Did you know that the color wheel you learned in school isn't the same as the colors used for the Web? It's not even the way colors are mixed for printing? Well, OK, same colors, just different arrangements and mixes. • The traditional primary colors are RED, YELLOW, and BLUE. • The Web equivalent of the primary colors are RED, GREEN, and BLUE (called additive primaries). • The Printing equivalent of the primary colors are MAGENTA (between Blue & Red), YELLOW, and CYAN (between Green & Blue) (called subtractive primaries). When you encounter color wheels on the About Desktop Publishing site and they seem a little "off" - it's because I'm using a color wheel based on the additive & subtractive primaries. (And you thought resolution was a confusing topic!) Learn more... Key to the line... After digging into the CMYK explanation, it seems one designer came up with more related questions about that K: 1. What do you mean by "solid and tint colours"? 2. What do you mean by outline in this instance? Discuss it in the DTP Classroom. This email is written by: Jacci Howard Bear Desktop Publishing Guide Email Me | My Blog | My Forum   Missing a lesson? Click here. About U. is our collection of free online courses designed to help you learn a new skill, solve a problem, get something done, or just learn more about your world. Sign up now, and we will email you lessons on a daily or weekly basis. You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the About.com 'Daily Dose of DTP' email. If you wish to unsubscribe, please click here. About respects your privacy: Our Privacy Policy Contact Information: 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2010 About.com   Advertisement