Kyocera KM-C2030 FieryX3e+ Color Reference Guide - Page 101
Printing techniques, Halftone and continuous tone devices
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AA-9 Desktop Color Primer The CMYK colorants used in offset printing and by your printer toner are to some degree transparent. When one layer of colorant is applied on top of another, you see the effect of both. To create a range of intermediary colors, a method is required for varying the amount of each colorant that is applied. A technique called halftoning is used in offset printing, while color printers typically use a proprietary system for applying ink or toner colors that is similar to halftoning. Printing techniques Until recently, most color printing was done on printing presses using one of several printing techniques-offset lithography, flexography, or gravure, to name a few. All traditional printing techniques require lengthy preparation before a press run can take place. Short-run color printing, including Color Server printing, eliminates most of this preparation. By streamlining the process of color printing, the Color Server makes short print runs economically feasible. In contemporary offset lithographic printing, digital files from desktop computers are output to an imagesetter, which creates film separations. The film is used to make a prepress proof, which is an accurate predictor of the final print job and allows you to make corrections before going to press. Once the proof is approved, the printer makes plates from the film and runs the print job on the press. With the Color Server, you simply print the file. The Color Server processes the PostScript information in the file and sends four bitmaps (one each for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) to the printer. The ease of Color Server printing makes possible experimentation that would be too costly on a press, allowing unlimited finetuning of color and design elements. Halftone and continuous tone devices Halftoning is used in offset printing to print each process color at a different intensity, allowing millions of different colors to be reproduced using only the four process colors. Depending on the required intensity of a given color, toner is placed on paper in dots of different size. The grid of dots used for each toner color is called a screen. Halftone screens are aligned to unique angles designed to eliminate interference patterns called moiré that can arise with halftoning.