Professional printing question

E
Posted By
exingo
Nov 9, 2003
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369
Replies
4
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Closed
I am reading that Professional printers use 1 pass for each color. Does this mean that it litteraly prints the C, M, Y, K at different times? Does it matter which color is printed first?
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Don_McCahill
Nov 9, 2003
Most professional printing presses have four separate units built in line. So in one sense each color is applied at one time, but by the same machine. A few smaller shops will print four color work on one-color or two color presses, which require that the paper be fed through four times, or two times, respectively, to get the four colors.

Most shops print colors from light to dark. Starting with yellow and ending with black.

It really makes no difference to the designer how the printing order is handled. Your big job is to make sure the job is CMYK, and not the RGB you might be used to.
E
exingo
Nov 9, 2003
Thanks for the info. I am reading Classroom in a Book and it says "When working with 2 colors Photoshop will create the two-color separations needed for the printing process?" What does this mean?
JS
John_Slate
Nov 9, 2003
Most shops print colors from light to dark. Starting with yellow and ending with black.

That would be for 4-pass printing.

Standard in-line ink rotation is Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow last.

The theory there being that, on the average the black plate of a picture has less ink coverage, and the yellow has the most. This rotation then provides superior wet-on-wet ink adhesion (ink trapping).
L
LenHewitt
Nov 9, 2003
Exingo,

Photoshop will create the two-color separations …..What does this
mean?<<

With Litho printing, each colour is applied separately. Each colour requires a printing plate that is inked with the particulat ink. You are referring to ‘Duotones’ that consist of two Spot colours. These, when separated, will result in two pages, each carrying the data for one colour. These are ‘printed’ upon ‘lith film’ which is used to produce the individual printing plates.

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