Impact of Colour Sequencing on Print Quality in Process Colour Printing

Abstract

Colour printing is the process whereby illustrative materials are reproduced in colour on printed pages. This research has been conducted in order to compartmentalize and possibly aggregate the various sequences which printers use in producing their works; this is because a survey of most Nigerian print houses shows that these printers use different schemes in their production processes. The four colour process is used to produce a complete range of colours; the materials to be reproduced are separated into three basic colours plus black which is used for density and image contrast; these colours are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, plus black which is regarded as the key colour. CMYK refers to the primary colours of pigment: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. These are the colours used in the printing press in “Four-colour process printing”. The objective of this study is to find out which of these sequencing produces the best print, their pros and cons and the best possible ways to navigate these various schemes. In this paper, the writer takes a look into what printers and machine minders thinks is the proper sequence of printing these colours and the processes from pre-press to finishing. The method used in this research is mixed, with survey, descriptive and literature review and so at the end it was concluded that various printers have their respective ways of arranging colours to suit their expertise and that irrespective of the sequencing type used, the dexterity and astuteness of machine minders matters a lot.