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Black, The Mother Of Color

Black is the only color that contain of all three primary color, and its usually is a cool color(bluish) cause in perception black is the shadow color. Any images contain of black, in common its the shading that form the images tonality and images dimension, but in color expert eyes its a color not just a tone. Wrong use of black can either muddy the color or destroy the color’s original quality.

In printing environment, due to black is the most high density and opaque color therefore using without knowing the potential of it, it’s either finding hard to get better quality print or mess up the print work. There is two type of black in CMYK printing; 100 black (pure black) or CMY black (three color black) and the most critical black is the combine of CMY+K’s 4 color black (rich black).

The “KEY” is The Black

The “K” in CMYK stands for key, since in four-color printing cyan, magenta, and yellow printing plates are carefully keyed or aligned with the key of the black key plate. Some sources suggest that the “K” in CMYK comes from the last letter in “black” and was chosen because B already means blue. However, this explanation, though plausible and useful as a mnemonic, is incorrect

The “black” generated by mixing cyan, magenta and yellow primaries is unsatisfactory, and so four-color printing uses black ink in addition to the subtractive primaries. Common reasons for using black ink include:

• In traditional preparation of color separations, a red keyline on the black line art marked the outline of solid or tint color areas. In some cases a black keyline was used when it served as both a color indicator and an outline to be printed in black. Because usually the black plate contained the keyline, the K in CMYK represents the keyline or black plate also sometimes called the key plate.

• Text is typically printed in black and includes fine detail (such as serifs), so to reproduce text or other finely detailed outlines using three inks without slight blurring would require impractically accurate registration.

• A combination of 100% cyan, magenta, and yellow inks soaks the paper with ink, making it slower to dry, and sometimes impractically so. This also can cause the ink to bleed.

• A combination of 100% cyan, magenta, and yellow inks often results in a muddy dark brown color that does not quite appear black. Adding black ink absorbs more light, and yields much darker blacks.

• Using black ink is less expensive than using the corresponding amounts of colored inks.

When a very dark area is desirable, a colored or gray CMY “bedding” is applied first, then a full black layer is applied on top, making a rich, deep black; this is called rich black. A black made with just CMY inks is sometimes called a composite black or process black.

The amount of black to use to replace amounts of the other ink is variable, and the choice depends on the technology, paper and ink in use. Processes called under color removal, under color addition, and gray component replacement are used to decide on the final mix; different CMYK recipes will be used depending on the printing task.

Black, Is The Key of Detail in Photography Reproduction

Every photography, images and communication artwork which needed to mess reproducing and mess publishing require to utilize the mess reproduction printing technology – which what we common know as OFFSET ENGRAVING PRINTING, this technology is not only using for high-end print production, the common know home user Mono Laser and Color Laser Printing is using the same technology, the difference is it using powder base ink pigment.