What is four-colour printing?

If you regularly use the services of your printer, you will have heard of four-colour printing, but do you know exactly what it is?

Here we offer you what four-colour printing is. By discovering the behind-the-scenes work of the printer, you will be better able to prepare your project in advance and, as a result, to obtain a result that lives up to your your expectations.

Four-colour printing: what are we talking about?

The term four-colour process is composed of the prefix "quadri" which means four and the suffix "chromie" which means colour.

Four-colour printing is a printing process with four colours: 

• the cyan (primary colour between blue and green, complementary to red),
• the magenta (primary colour pinkish purple or purplish red),
• the yellow (a colour placed between green and orange in the spectrum),
• and finally the black (the darkest colour that exists, reflecting no light).

To refer to these four colours, printers frequently use the acronym CMYK using the first letter of each of the four colours. The acronym becomes CMYK for cyan, magenta, yellow and key.

These four colours were chosen by the printers because they are the ones whose combination allows the reproduction of the greatest number of colours perceived by the human eye. Four-colour printing is therefore a standard for both offset printing (i.e. when the text or motif to be printed is carried on a specific roller which is applied to the paper) and for digital printing (i.e. the reproduction of documents from computer data).

At Copymage, we also use the terms quadri printing "or " four-colour printing "to refer to this process.

What is the difference between CMYK and RGB?

Please note, do not confuse CMYK and RGB !

The acronym RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue. RGB is the process of creating process that creates the colours that appear on computer screens.

It is very important to understand the difference between the two because this is whyit is not always possible to find the RGB colours used in the computer design of the project on the four-colour printed material.

The colour spectrum produced in four-colour printing is slightly narrower than the colours produced in RGB The colour spectrum produced in four-colour printing is slightly narrower than that produced in RGB - which does not cover the full range of colours visible to the human eye. Nevertheless, four-colour printing can reproduce 70% of the colours perceivable by humans.

How does four-colour printing work?

You wish to entrust us with the realization of your custom-made poster or theprinting of photos on plexiglass ? We will offer you four-colour printing which will allow you to obtain brilliant colours and a high quality finish.

Here are the different stages of production of your four-colour prints:

1. You design your material and choose the illustrations or photographs that you wish to highlight. For four-colour printing of photos on Plexiglas, the quality of the photos taken by modern phones may be good enough. It is also possible to select images within a online royalty-free image bank which will allow you to have, in your office, a view of the Bay of Along without having taken a plane!

2. You send us your files. Please pay attention to the specifications of your file: for example, when making a custom-made poster, we invite you to add, in Photoshop or any other page layout software, 1 cm to the final size of your document to obtain 5 mm on each edge of the final support, which is called the "bleed". In case of doubt, we are at your disposal to check all your files before they are printed in full colour.

3. We carry out the four-colour printing of your project. Contrary to popular belief, the colours cyan, magenta, yellow and black are not mixed in four-colour printing. This process actually consists of printing a multitude of microscopic coloured dots next to each other. Each dot of colour is printed according to the screen, respecting a precise frequency and size. The human eye and brain then perceive the colours created by the four-colour printing process with distance and overview.

4. We return your finished projects to you. Despite the care we take in the production of your print media, it is possible that the four-colour printing process does not perfectly reflect the colours you wish to see on your communication medium. When printing certain packaging, it may be essential to respect the brand's colour exactly. In this case, it will probably be necessary to turn to a more expensive but even more more expensive process that offers even more nuance in colour definition. in the definition of the colours. Pantonefor example, has created a catalogue containing more than 1000 colours from a mixture of 13 pigments (not including black). If this catalogue contains the colour that appeals to you, we can we can order it specially for you - for an extra charge.

Four-colour printing: one element among others

Four-colour printing allows for a very large number of colours. But the final colour rendition of your poster of your poster or your decorative photograph does not only depend on four-colour printing.

Many other elements influence the final result of your print:

• the quality of the paper used (grammage, tint, gloss / matt / satin, etc.),
• the type of ink,
• finishes (lamination, varnish, etc.),
• the image resolution and the dimensions of the printed media,
• the printer on which the work you entrust to us will be carried out.

Thus, when printing your sales brochurefor example, you can choose a coated paperThis is a paper whose surface is covered with a layer of a mixture of pigments and binders. This surface layer prevents the ink from penetrating the paper during four-colour printing. As the surface dries, the colours are much more intense, more vibrant than on uncoated paper. Coated paper is also available in matt or glossy versionThis also has an influence on the colour rendition.

Four-colour printing offers an excellent excellent rendering quality. To ensure that you make the right choices at every stage of the creation of your print media, take the time to consult us. Our experience of the materials and machines used will enable us to guide and accompany you throughout the creation of your communication media.