As graphic designers, we do not need to master too professional printing knowledge, because after all, printing and design are two independent jobs, but they are closely connected. It is quite necessary to understand the relevant knowledge and process of printing. This printing knowledge helps us to consider whether the finished product can be realized at the early stage of design, and has guiding significance for cost control and process selection. So what printing knowledge do designers need to master?
The color model of desktop printers, printers, inkjet printers and other printing equipment usually uses CMYK, which is one of the models for describing colors, which is equivalent to describing an “apple” in languages of different countries. CMYK is the abbreviation of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black English initials. Black is changed to K in order to avoid confusion with RGB Blue, and computer screens, TVs, mobile phones, projectors, digital cameras, scanners, etc. All use RGB color model. Similar models include LAB and HSB.
CMYK is a pigment color that absorbs light. The mixed color of the three primary colors of the pigment is black, which is the complementary color of RGB, contrary to the three primary colors of light. Three primary colors can be mixed to get most of the colors, although in theory three colors can get black, only three CMY inks are needed, but because the current manufacturing process cannot produce high-purity inks, the result of CMY addition is actually A dark red. So extra black ink is added to form a four-color printing color.
Multi-color black or four-color black (rich black or jet black) is made of four-color CMYK overprinting. In order to make large areas of black thicker or to correct the warmer tones of black ink, multi-color black is usually used. The CMY value does not have to be set to 100. A more common method is to add a small amount of C (cyan) to complement the warmer black in the case of K90-K100. This also makes color registration less difficult. For text, it is basically necessary to choose monochrome black.
