About Color Separation
What is Color Separation?
What We Need to Know About Color Separation?
The process of dividing the graphic into two or more colors is called color separation. Color separations make printing complex color images on paper possible. It’s dividing a full color image into four separate components, every component in the file is printed in a combination of four colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, known as CMYK. Separating a picture by colors in order to make negatives and plates for color printing.
The separations are printed individually. Combining these four ink colors produces a wide spectrum of colors on the printed page. Typically, separations are put on film, and the printing plates are made from the film. As sheets of paper run through the printing press, each plate transfers an image in one of the four colors to the paper. The colors—which are applied as minuscule dots—combine to produce a full-color image. Each single-color layer is then printed separately, one on top of the other, to give the impression of infinite colors.
Separated CMYK components
CYAN
MAGENTA
YELLOW
BLACK
Original (Full) Image
Printing these four ink colors one by one produces a full image with wide spectrum of colors like this image.
MONA LISA
How can we separate?
Designers and print companies use proprietary software like Separation Studio to separate digital files into the four CMYK colors and to transfer the color-separated information to plates or directly to digital presses.
Most print designers work in the CMYK model to more accurately predict the appearance of the colors in the final printed product.
This type of color separation, mixing four colors to produce an infinite variety of colors, is called process color separation. Another type of color separation, called spot color separation, is used to separate colors that are not to be mixed. In this case, each spot color is represented by its own ink.