WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FOUR COLOR PROCESS AND SPOT COLOR PRINTING?

Four color process is a system where a color image is divided into four color values that are transferred to printing plates and printed sequentially on a printing press. The four colors are cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), and black (K). Using these four colors at different values, the press recreates the original image with inks.

Spot color is the use of pre-mixed colors rather than by combining color from cyan, magenta, yellow and black. To ensure consistency of color, the printing industry has adopted standards for spot color. There are several spot color systems but the most widely used is the PANTONE® system. Pre-mixed colors are selected from swatch books.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUETYPE AND POSTSCRIPT FONTS?

TrueType is a font file format that has come into widespread use in recent years - especially on the Windows platform. TrueType fonts, like their PostScript counterparts, are scalable - they define the outlines of the characters in such a way as to allow them to be printed (or displayed onscreen) at a variety of sizes, without their becoming jagged on the edges. All the resources you need to display the typeface are contained within a single file.

The PostScript specification of scalable fonts was first popularized in the infancy of desktop publishing, when Apple introduced its first LaserWriter printer. The PostScript format was created by Adobe Systems, which also markets some of the finest quality PostScript fonts available. Managing PostScript fonts is slightly more complicated than managing TrueType fonts, for the simple reason that each font has two component files. Bitmap fonts are used as "place-holders" for onscreen display, but are unsuitable for final output. Printer fonts, which define characters as vectors rather than pixels, are swapped in at the printing stage. Sometimes they are also used to enhance onscreen display, as with Adobe Type Manager software.

Please forward any questions or comments you may have regarding color printing, fonts or any other topics Yukon Graphics did not cover in this segment to info@yukongraphics.com.