ColorAcademy 2005

Printing and Colour

The standard work in colour reproduction is Hunt’s The Reproduction of Colour. His book deals with colour not only in the printing of pictures but also in relation to physiology, psychology, physics, chemistry and a host of technologies. It also presents complexities which seem well nigh unfathomable and involves a wide variety of industrial enterprises. Above all it is about the reproduction of colour in pictures.

Much commercial printing uses processes involving inks of specific colours, however home and general office colour printing uses only three. Both colour inkjet printers and colour laser printers use cyan, magenta and yellow to create colours - ink in inkjets, toner powder in laser printers.

Inkjet printers spray the ink onto the paper as it passes under the print heads whilst laser printers use a beam which reflects from a mirror to attract the toner powder to required areas of the paper as it rolls over a drum.

Whereas inkjets apply all colours (and black) in a single pass through the printer, the paper in laser printers passes over the drum once for each colour. Colour photocopiers work using a

similar principle and certain models with removable panels for the purposes of paper-jam recovery allow for the viewing of the multi-stage process where the separate adding of each of the three colours can be clearly seen.

Some inkjet printers, often described as photo printers contain cartridges that use more than the basic three colours. Photo printers typically contain lighter variants of both cyan and magenta in addition to the standard colours along with, in some models, a grey ink in addition to the black. The addition of these inks allows for greater subtelty and accuracy of colours in photographic reproduction.

References

BANN, D. & GARGAN, J. (1990) Colour Proof Correction. Question & Answer Book. Oxford: Phaidon.

BISSELL, E.C. (1892) Genesis printed in Colors. Hartford, Conn.: Belknap & Warfield. Text is coloured according to the original sources. (See also colour in Literature)

COOK, A. & FLEURY, R. (1989) Type & Colour. A Handbook of Creative Combinations. London: Columbus Books.

CURWEN, H. (1948) Printing. London: Puffin.

HUNT, R.W.G. (1967) The Reproduction of Colour. London: Fountain Press.