Ooh, the Colors....

I’ve spent the past two days trying to fix artwork submitted by a client, and it’s reminding me that most people, recent design school grads included, just don’t understand color and how it works on the printed page. In the hopes of throwing a little light on the subject, here are some definitions you might find useful:

CMYK

This is how most full color printing gets done. It stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. I have no idea why K equals Black, but it does. Somebody figured it all out a long time before I was born, and I’m willing to accept it. Any full color photograph you see printed in a magazine or newspaper is created by those four colors, screened at different angles, and printed in four passes onto a sheet of paper. When your printer mentions “four color process”, this is what he’s referring to. Under a magnifying glass a picture of green grass becomes a jumble of Cyan and Yellow dots; the sky is a combination of Cyan and Magenta, and the tree trunks are Yellow and Black. Maybe you should’ve gotten stoned before reading this. Most parts of any color printed image will contain varying levels of all four colors. If you’re including color photographs in your newsletter you’ll want them to be CMYK. Most image editing software, like Adobe PhotoShop, will allow you to convert any image to CMYK. If you don’t do that, the prepress guy will have to do it for you, and you just might get charged for it. This is especially handy to know these days, because you probably took those pictures with a digital camera, and they save all your files in RGB.

Wait for it... wait for it...

RGB

Red, Green and Blue. This is how color images are created on TV and the internet, and video games, and your cell phone, and... well, hell, everywhere but the printed page. In all those mediums, images are created with light instead of ink. Red and Blue make Purple, Green and Blue make Aqua, and Green and Red make... well, a really disgusting shade, sort of like dirty moss. Maybe you should’ve dropped some extasy before reading this. Anyway, the point here is, RGB looks great on a backlit screen, but it confuses the hell out of printing equipment which is all calibrated to lay CMYK down onto the paper.

Ink vs. Light

Here’s an interesting side note that may help you remember some of this... If you want to create white with light, you use all the colors in the visible spectrum. If you want to create black with light, you just turn the damn light off. If you want to make white with ink, don’t do anything. The paper is already white. If you want to print the darkest black possible, use all the colors. To put it another way, in CMYK, more is darker and less is lighter. In RGB it’s just the opposite.

Spot Colors

These are still combinations of CMYK, but they’re pre-mixed like house paint to match a numbered Pantone swatchbook.* If you’re having letterhead printed and your logo is green, spot colors will save you a bundle. In CMYK it would take 2 plates to create that green, but if you choose a spot color, the printer will mix that exact color and apply it to the paper in one pass, using only one plate. The other bonus is that your chosen shade of green has a Pantone number, and it can be matched by any printer on the planet who has a swatchbook. And, much like drinking problems, all pressmen have Pantone swatchbooks.

On the other hand, if you’re printing a piece with CMYK photographs, and your green logo appears on the same page, insisting on a spot color will add a plate to your press run. In that case, it’s best to let your logo be converted to CMYK so it can run in four passes with the rest of the job.

I know, I know, this is a lot of information to keep straight if you’re not in the graphics biz, but knowing a little about color and how it’s used to create your print materials will save you and your printer some time and frustration.

Next time around, maybe I’ll relate the story of my last two days at work, and how understanding color would have made all the difference. Maybe you should get drunk before you read it.

* That thing I’m peaking through in my profile pic? That’s a Pantone Swatch book.