How do you do color printing?

Answer 1

There are three basic ways. First is "spot color" printing. You do it this way when you're only putting one or two colors in the job, although I actually saw someone attempt to do it with four spot colors. (I say "attempt" because we couldn't ever get it to separate just into spot colors and we ran it in process colors.) Let's say you're running a job with black body copy and orange heads. You mix a few pounds of orange, put it in one unit and black in another, and run the job until it's done. The second way is process color on a press. This uses at least four colors of ink: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. You, or your computer, calculates the amount of each ink it will take to produce a particular color. You then create plates that will put that amount of each ink on the paper. When you run paper through a press that contains those plates and those colors of ink, the press will apply each color to the sheet. At the delivery end of the press, you'll have a colorful image. (You can also do "process plus spot" printing--very common with customers who are highly particular about the color their logo prints.) The third way is digital process printing--which is done on inkjet printers. It still uses process colors but the computer tells the printer what colors to spray where.