Understanding color
1
Printing
Using color
Your printer gives you the power to communicate in color. Color attracts attention, commands
respect, and adds value to your printed material or information. Using color increases
readership and is read more often than the same material printed in black and white. Color
can be used to motivate people and speed the analysis of complex data. When you print ondemand color, you save money.
Paper handling
To enhance your use and understanding about color printing, this section provides
information about color and how to select, use, and adjust color for your network and desktop
printing.
Maintenance
Types of color
Troubleshooting
Administration
To be effective, the use of color needs to be planned. The reason for this is how the eye sees
color. When light is used to produce color on your monitor or TV, it uses three primary colors.
They are red, green, and blue (also known as RGB color). All printed output such as
newspapers, magazines, brochures, and of course your documents use the colors cyan,
magenta, yellow, and black (known as CMYK color). Because the colors are presented to the
eye differently, what you see on your monitor may look different than what you have printed.
By understanding how we see color on the screen and how we see color in printed
documents, we can better plan the use of color.
Index
www.lexmark.com
Lexmark C910
Understanding color
2
Printing
How we see color
Using color
When we see color, we actually see light that is passed through or reflected from an object.
What our eyes perceive as visible light are wavelengths. Our eyes are sensitive to three
specific wavelength colors: red, green, and blue.
Paper handling
Maintenance
Troubleshooting
Administration
When you look at your monitor, you see red, green, and blue light that is projected into your
eyes. This additive color begins with black and adds red, green, and blue to produce the
colors you can see. If you add equal amounts of red, green, and blue, you produce white. The
images and colors you see on your screen are created using various amounts of red, green,
and blue.
Index
www.lexmark.com
Lexmark C910
Understanding color
3
Printing
Primary colors
Using color
Paper handling
Notice the three primary additive colors red, green, and blue in the illustration. You can see
that when all three colors are combined, you get white. However, look at the area where any
two colors overlap. What you see is cyan, magenta, or yellow. Equal amounts of green and
blue produce cyan. Equal amounts of blue and red produce magenta, and equal amounts of
red and green produce yellow. The toner colors used to place color on your printed material
are cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
Maintenance
Troubleshooting
Administration
Index
The colors in newspapers, magazines, and the documents you print are based on the light
being reflected from the printed material and into your eyes. The color you see is subtractive
color. Subtractive color begins with white light. Portions of the white light wavelength are then
subtracted based on the colors present on the printed page. What this means is the light
www.lexmark.com
Lexmark C910
Understanding color
4
Printing
Using color
Paper handling
reaching your document is partially absorbed by the toner placed on the page. For example,
when white light encounters cyan, it absorbs the red wavelength in the light and reflects blue
and green toward your eyes.
If you add equal amounts of cyan, magenta, and yellow, you create black. When you combine
these colors equally in your printed material you create what is known as process black.
When printed, process black looks like a very dirty or muddy brown. Because of this, your
printer has a black toner cartridge to provide you with true black for all your printing needs.
Maintenance
Troubleshooting
Administration
Color difference
Index
Most software applications today provide us with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You
Get) environment. This helps us develop the look of our document. However, the difference
www.lexmark.com
Lexmark C910
Understanding color
5
Printing
Using color
Paper handling
between the additive and subtractive colors may sometimes cause a problem between what
you see and what you get. This is due to the difference between additive and subtractive
colors. The reason for this lies in the color spectrum of the different devices.
Your printer is capable of delivering over 16 million colors. With such a large variety of colors
to choose from, you'll probably be able to closely match most of your screen designs. There
are, however, colors your printer can produce that are impossible to duplicate on your monitor
and there are colors your monitor can display that cannot be duplicated on any printer.
Maintenance
Troubleshooting
Administration
Index
www.lexmark.com
Lexmark C910
Understanding color
6
Printing
Using color
There are many ways you can ensure the color on the screen and the color you print are the
same or at least a very close match. When you create a swatch like the one below, you can
choose and compare your printed and screen colors.
Paper handling
Maintenance
Troubleshooting
Administration
The easiest way for you to get consistent color from your screen to your printer is to select
standard colors. When you produce color on your screen, it is produced using a color model.
A color model is a system that defines color according to a set of basic properties. Most
software applications can use this color model to closely match the colors you have on your
screen.
Index
www.lexmark.com
Lexmark C910
Understanding color
7
Printing
Using color
Paper handling
As stated earlier, one simple method to aid in planning the use of color is to produce a color
swatch of the colors you plan to use. Then, you can see how these colors will look when
printed.
As your monitor ages, the colors on the screen also change. Changing the toner cartridges,
photodeveloper cartridge, and paper in your printer also has a major impact on the color in
your printed document. Always print a new swatch of the colors you plan on using before you
invest a lot of time creating your screen designs.
Maintenance
Troubleshooting
Administration
▲
Index
www.lexmark.com
Lexmark C910