About separations


    To produce high-quality separations, it helps to be familiar with the basics of printing, including line screens, resolution, process colors, and spot colors. You should also work closely with the print shop that will produce your separations, consulting its experts before beginning each job and during the process.

    To reproduce color and continuous-tone images, printers usually separate artwork into four plates (called "process colors)--one plate for each of the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black portions of the image. You can also include custom inks (called "spot colors"). In this case a separate plate is created for each spot color. When inked with the appropriate color and printed in register with one another, these colors combine to reproduce the original artwork.

    The process of dividing the image into two or more colors is called color separating, and the films from which the plates are created are called the separations.

    Composite image printed on a color laser printer compared to four-color separations printed on an imagesetter.
    Composite image printed on a color laser printer compared to four-color separations printed on an imagesetter.

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