Printing has actually come a long way in the last few decades. Anyone who has a color printer is most likely familiar with the most typical color printing format: 4-color printing. 4-color printing utilizes what’s called the CMYK color model of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (i.e. black) inks. Nevertheless, CMYK also depends on the paper it’s printed on to truly accomplish a continuous spectrum of colors through a process called halftoning.
Halftoning enables less than complete saturation of the main colors; small dots of each primary are printed in a pattern little enough that people perceive a solid color. Magenta printed with a 20% halftone, for example, produces a pink color, since the eye views the small magenta dots on the white paper background as lighter and less saturated than the color of pure magenta ink.
Without halftoning, 4-color printing might produce just seven colors: the 3 primaries themselves (cyan, magenta, and yellow), plus 3 secondary colors produced by layering 2 of the primaries (red, green, and blue) plus matte black. With halftoning, a complete constant variety of colors can be produced. However, the variety is really narrow in comparison to the real color spectrum. Consequently, other printing procedures have also been invented such as 6-color printers, 8-color printers, and 12-color printers.
6 Color Printers
Originated in 1998 by Pantone Inc under the name Hexachrome, 6-color printing included orange and green inks to the traditional (and still the most typical setup) CMYK. The additional 2 inks expand the color range for much better color recreation. It was therefore likewise known as a CMYKOG (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key, Orange, Green) process. Hexachrome was stopped by Pantone in 2008 when Adobe Systems stopped supporting their HexWare plugin software application, but other business have continued to offer 6 color printers, albeit under the generic name instead of the trademarked “Hexachrome.”
However, Hexachrome was very difficult to calibrate appropriately (which is why it needed the HexWare plugin to begin with), so some 6-color printers instead use a CcMmYK process of adding a light cyan and a light magenta to widen the color range of the middle tone region, which helps improve the look of blue skies and numerous complexion.
8 Color Printers
Even with 6 colors, though, printing in big formats still suffers from granularity and 6-color printing is frequently tough to adjust (if utilizing CMYKOG) or uses more ink (for the CcMmYK procedure) in order to render darker colors. In an effort to attend to these issues, as well as enhance the color range even further, 8-color printing was created.
8-color printing is an expansion of the CcMmYK process, this time including light yellow and “light black” (i.e. gray) to develop a CcMmYyKk process. On the whole, 8-color printing attains a few clear wins:.
- Boosts evident resolution.
- Produces finer details.
- Guarantees smoother gradient transitions.
- Produces vivid and crisp colors.
- Decreases graininess.
However, it also prints slower.
12 Color Printers
12-color printing is the most photorealistic option, especially for large-format printing. The 12-color procedure takes the CcMmYK process and includes a glossy black (in contrast to the K black, which is matte) and a special color “enhancer” (which is typically a kind of gloss) to boost the appearance of every print. The remaining colors differ depending upon the maker, however in all, 12-color printing broadens on the CcMmYK color gamut by over 80%!
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