Four Colour Printing – Do you know the concept ? Interesting fact.

When you look at printed magazines and pictures, most people assume that there are thousands of colours printed on the paper.

In fact, did you know that these pictures and images are predominately made up from just 4 base colours, which can be combined to produce literally millions of colours.

The four base colours that are used are Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black and by laying these over the top of each other in the form of dots, colours and images are formed.

Look very carefully at your printed work under a magnifying glass and you will see the minute dots that create these images.  This is a lot more apparent when you look at newspapers as the dots are not as fine and are more easily visible.

By combining various strengths of dots (halftones) and laying them directly over the top of each other in these four base colours, you can literally create as many colours as you can possibly imagine….

So next time you look at printed pictures, spare a thought for the accuracy needed with print technology to bring you your finished product.

The below pictures would all be produced from the four base (process) colours.

Interesting !!