Colour for Print

Colour systems for the print process

Subtractive Colour - The more colours you layer on top of each other the less light is reflected - colours are subtracted so it becomes darker until you end up with black. Subtractive colour is what happens when you mix paint, print a picture, or highlight a word on a page.

Additive colour - The exact reverse of Subtractive colour, the more colours you mix the lighter it becomes. Additive colour occurs with televisions, computer monitors and all screen based images.



CMYK (cyan/magenta/yellow/key black – 4 colour process) Subtractive. This is used in the most common printed process called litho or offset litho RGB (red/green/blue – screen based) Additive.

Greyscale (Black and white continuous tone and any shade of grey, such as a black and white photograph)

Duotone (when a continuous tone image is printed in 2 or more spot colours – this term is also generally used when describing tri and quadtones. Spot colour (one or more specially mixed colours as opposed as a result of a CMYK or RGB mix) - Because it only uses a few inks it costs less to print, can also be used for nice effects on the images.

Played about on photoshop with a image to get used to how it all works the image needs to be put into greyscale before changing to duotone. Also experimented with the graphs making hi lights have more of one of the colours (Last image)

Mono (like greyscale but with a coloured ink. - A few screen shots from photoshop,