4 Color Process Printing

If you are like many people in search of color printing you have heard the term 4 color process printing.  While many of us have heard this phrase in association with color printing many of us don’t even realize what it means.  What you may not realize is that you are benefitting from 4 color process printing every day at home, at work, and everywhere in between.  In fact, most of us use a 4 color process printing machine regularly.

So, what is 4 color process printing?  Four color process printing is a system where a colored image is separated into four different color values.  This process of separation is also known as color separation and this is done through the use of filters and screens.  This separation is done digitally.  The result is that there is a color separation of four images that when they are transferred to printing plates and printing on a print press the four colors come together to recreate the original color image as desired.  Today the four color printing process is used around the world and is universal in commercial printing industry.

The four different colored inks are the colors that you will see when you put a new color ink cartridge in your printer.  The colors are blue, magenta, yellow, and black.  The digital processor knows how to combine these colors to achieve just about any color so you can recreate any colored image exactly.  The four color process printing is also known as C-M-Y-K and means cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow, and black.

Any time you have something printed by a professional printer you will be taking advantage of the 4 color process printing.  The four colors are used to beautifully recreate the image that you submitted for printing.  This printing process is much more economical because instead of having to have an endless number of ink colors to print your colored items, you just need four different ink colors.  This means that printing is much cheaper than it would have been otherwise and printers can be much smaller.

As you can see, 4 color process printing is an important part of the printing world.  Whether you are printing colored pieces in a newspaper, a greeting card, a business card, or magazine the four color process is used.  As you can see, you benefit from the four color process printing more than you had probably ever imagined when you weren’t sure what it was.