Four Color Tricks and Trade Secrets for Hi-quality Offset Color Printing
Published Time：2010-02-25 14:39:38
Like any hobby, occupation or field, there's trade secrets that lead you to an easier way of doing things. Knowing such secrets let you solve problems that have been puzzling you for years. Or perhaps as a neophyte or newbie to graphic design, you would stumble on shortcuts to make designing easy. Finding these out would prove how definitely easy it is to generate offset prints and overcome the hurdles of offset color printing.
These tricks and secrets are helpful that they remind new designers or uninitiated printing clients as to what they must know about color and what they must recall when printing. Whether you are printing something as tiny as a business card or as large as a poster, color always matter. Color is always a part of the equation.
In order to bring out and get a full translation of your colors and your designs on your prints, it pays to be on the safe side and review the requirements your printer has asked of you.
Advice on Color and Color printing
1. The Resolution
While the resolution dictates how sharp your photos or images are, it is also congruent to the outcome of your print’s colors. Blurry images lose definition of your colors and in turn, seem to produce a dull effect.
Always check the resolution and set it at 300 dpi. Never compromise the resolution of your prints. And never mistake that business cards do not need that high resolution.
2. Convert RGB to CMYK
Always convert your designs and images from RGB to CMYK. This is a requirement posted by most printing companies.
RGB occupies a different color scale from CYMK. And in order for CMYK to imitate a color in the RGB scale and vice versa, it's to compensate and adjust itself. However, it still has limitations for it cannot accurately copy all the colors. And so, you must work on your designs solely in CMYK.
If you persist, bright colors might appear dull or flat and neon colors would change on the printed piece.
3. Rich Black – Possible Combinations
Offset color printing companies would often tell you that to get a rich black; you would need not a 100% black but a combination of other colors within the cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink colors.
There are a lot of resources that dictates how to get a rich black. Some might point out a combination of 50% cyan, 50% magenta and 100% black. Others would involve a combination of 60% cyan, 50% magenta, 50% yellow and 100% black.
There is also, notably, what they call a icy black and a warm black: The former with a combination of 60% cyan and 100% black, while the latter a combination of 60% magenta, 30% yellow and of work, 100% black.
4. Contrast and Brightness
If you don’t need to pick from hundreds of color palettes trying to adjust the colors of your picture or photos, you might need to try and tweak it with the contrast and brightness options. These are common tools that you would find in most design program programs and other picture storing and capturing devices.
The play on light and dark and the volume of your colors would help you move from icy shades to warmer shades. Sometimes, this helps you accomplish a saturated color palette which is ideal if you go for this style on your offset color printing projects.
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The article comes from: Four Color Tricks and Trade Secrets for Hi-quality Offset Color Printing
