Four Color Printing: Troubleshooting Colors for Prints

Four color printing is a printing process used in most commercial printing companies to give you prints that are truly rich in color, and in the process, details.

Four color printing replicates your original photos and design’s colors, so you can have bright, brilliant colors on your prints.

Color Wheel Scheme
The color wheel is always a great device you can use to help you get the right color combinations. The color wheel gives is an ingenious tool you can use to observe colors, how it works in relationship with other colors and the like.

So look no further if you truly want help with your color selections for your prints. The color schemes that you can find in the color wheel can help you truly get colors with harmony and color combinations that offer contrasts.

The Complementary Color Scheme – give you colors of great contrast. This philosophy works by picking one color and then pairing it up with the color sitting right opposite to it. With the arrangement of the color wheel, you get nothing but colors with high-contrast to each other.

• With this color scheme, you can experiment pairing up warm and cool colors.
• It offers some of the strongest contrast you can find.

The Monochromatic Color Scheme – is perhaps one of the most familiar color combinations there are. You can achieve a monochromatic look by changing the intensity or saturation of one color. So you are moving up and down, from light to dark, on one color. You take colors within that range and use it to achieve this look.

• Colors blend well easily, thus, creating harmony.
• Colors are balanced too but that leaves little room for contrast.

The Analogous Color Scheme – is somewhat similar to the monochromatic scheme as it uses colors that are neighbor to each other. This means that you can use colors that gradually moves on to the next colors – like yellows that gets warmer, moving to oranges and reds.

• Analogous colors can blend easily too but offers a certain variety with the different colors you can use.
• Analogous colors gives contrast too but not as much as complementary colors.

Saturation
Color saturation is an important factor to qualify when adjusting your colors. Saturation pertains to the purity of color, so you know the measure of your color and its value. You can retain the redness of a color with the intensity you need.

• Saturated colors can bring you the attention you need while de-saturated colors give off an air of seriousness and professionalism, especially dark de-saturated colors.

Rich Black
Not too many people know this, but black too have varying intensities. Black, when used in your prints, sometimes fail to come out as black as you would have hoped.

To create a rich black, you would have to use and combine the color black with other color’s black. Move into the darkest green which is also pitch black in color and combine it. To this, your prints enjoy a layer of black you can see and “feel” on your prints.

Observe these simple pieces of advice in your print designs and apply it for your four color printing. See just what colors can do to brighten up your campaign, and in the same process, brighten up the world as well.