Special Colour tips from Tri-Tech
Four Color CMYK Files
Special Color tip from Tri-Tech to make all your printing for 2008 that much nicer and vivid.
When selecting a color for a background or heading. Always remember colors can be defined
by a variety of color values. Rather than adding black to a color darker. Try adding, Cyan or Magenta.
Lets examine a color that might be in your document.
Green...This color is mostly made up of Cyan and Yellow.
To make this color darker, the quick thinking is to add black.
Well, what happens if I do.
Generally on press you want to run your black high to keep type looking
really sharp and vibrant. Now, if we add black to our color we may be in trouble.
Lets assume on press the color is now, just a bit too dark. Lighten the black right?
Yes, to a point. Minor adjustments can be done however this is just one area.
If black is used to darken all through a project it may have to come down quite a bit.
Now the type might look washed out, or to compensate your backgrounds now look way too dark.
Ok, so what could we have done differently.
For the above example, add the missing color.
Since and equal combination of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow makes black.
We can conclude from that, if we add the third color up to the value of the other two colors it will not change the color
only darken it.
So, lets assume for this green we have 100% Cyan, and 85% yellow.
Go ahead, add 25% Magenta to this color. Notice how it has gotten darker?
On press we can now print with the black running high, without fillin on the backgrounds.
Will you notice a difference? A stunning difference. Colors will seem vivid and vibrant. Have you ever wondered why some pages of a magazine look awesome and others just don't seem to have the pop you are after. This could be the sole reason.
Just because it looks like a dark color, it doesn't need to have black in the color.
This little change will make your next project stand out in the crowd.
Mark Robinson
Pre-Press Specialist at Tri-Tech (Canada) Inc.
| • Remember to check photos, logo's and all graphics to ensure that everything is CMYK and not spot colors or RGB. Photos should be checked to ensure that they are saved in the right file format and that they are either bitmap, gray or CMYK. Photos should either be saved as a Tif or EPS. Never LZW compress or JPEG your photos as they will not work. |
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• Tif files, remember to put a fill of white in your box as this will ensure your photo will image properly. Quark, has the ability to auto crop around tiff images where there is no detail in the photo. This however creates an arching effect if the area Quark is trying to crop is not smooth. Tifs will always have a tenancy to develop holes or lose their edges, but by placing white in the box the photo will image properly without holes. |
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| • Remove all unused colors in Quark before importing your graphics and when creating new colors ensure that they are cmyk and not spot colors. When text is placed in from a word processing program or through e-mail. The colour of your text may be RBG black rather than 100% black. Always check this to ensure your black text is actually that. 100%Black will overprint and print sharp. RBG black will print in all 4 colours and could cause registration issues on press. |
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| • Remember that some spot colors and pantone colors will not convert to CYMK properly, they might look good on the screen, but not in print. Example, spot blue is 99.7 cyan and 96.6 magenta, this is not blue it is purple. This is the same for many special pantone colors. Remember to look at your color mix values not at your screen, Remember your screen is RGB not CMYK. |
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| • If you are building crop marks into your page, remember that they have to be the color 'registration' and not black. |  |