Chapter 3 Color

Objectives Identify the color systems and resolution Clarify category of colors

COLOR Color can play a central role in graphic design The designer creates with various combinations of color, from a simple black-and-white project to multicolored pieces Most often, work falls into one of the following categories

Color Categories 1/Color – only one color will be applied to the design 2/Color – use any two color 3/Color – allows the placement of any three colors 4/Color – Four color process is how most color photography and full color design work is printed More than four color – Sometimes the designer may want to print full color along with special colors, metallic inks, or varnishes

Choosing Color Always be tied to the concept, not because of the personal preference of either the designer or the client Color choice can be challenging Be aware how the design will be affected by the medium in which they will be finally put to use This is where color systems come into play

Color Systems Graphic designers use various systems of color depending on the medium they are working in Lets see what the color systems that they use…

Pantone ® Color System Common ways for graphic designers in the United States to specify color It consists of numbered colors that can be used by a designer and later mixed by the printer to match the same number Pantone color can be specified for ink, paint, and even fabric It is important to use the Pantone Library of Color books when specifying colors

CMYK color uses four separate primary color inks, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and black to combine and represent all other colors CMYK It is used for printing color photographs and other images in full color The CMYK process (also referred to as Process Color or Four-Color Process ) uses a system of printing small dots of the four process dots size are depends on the quality of the paper and printing Uncoated papers, such as newsprint, absorb ink need to be printed with larger dots than coated papers

Subtractive colors (CMYK)

Hexachrome is a six-color printing process developed by Pantone ® Inc. Hexachrome ® The colors used are specially developed and enhanced versions of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, plus two additional colors, vivid orange and green provides a wider color range than four-color process printing and more expensive than CMYK printing, but does provide high-quality results when accurate color is important in the design

Stands for Red, Green, and Blue, the three colors of projected (or additive) light – based color environment This system is used in computer monitors and is important for use in Web, television, and multimedia design RGB Additive colors (RGB)

Web-safe colors are part of the RGB spectrum Although a monitor can display more colors than the 216 colors of the Web-safe model, this system was created so that monitors set at resolution of 256 colors, on either a Macintosh or PC platform, could see the range of Web-safe colors without dithering (the breaking of a solid color into pixels of different colors) Web-Safe Colors The reason only 216 web-safe colors when monitors are set at 256 colors is because the 256 colors of the Macintosh platform are not the same 256 colors of the PC platform; hence, only 216 colors match across both platform

The term resolution is most often associated with an image’s degree of detail It can also refer to the quality capability of a graphic output device (monitor) or input device (scanner), and is sometimes used to refer to the number of colors that an image can display Resolution Confusing? Don’t worry…

Example of an image displayed on monitors of various sizes and resolutions Example of an image at 72-ppi and 300-ppi

Color depth or bit depth, is a computer graphics term describing the number of bits used to represent the color of a single pixel in a bitmapped image or video frame buffer.computer graphicsbitscolorpixelbitmappedframe buffer This concept is also known as bits per pixel (bpp), particularly when specified along with the number of bits used. Higher color depth gives a broader range of distinct colors. Color resolution

Color Depth 1 bit color 4 bit color 8 bit color 24 bit color No. of Colors ,777,216 Color "depth" is defined by the number of bits per pixel that can be displayed on a computer screen. Data is stored in bits. Each bit represents two colors because it has a value of 0 or 1. The more bits per pixel, the more colors that can be displayed. Examples of color depth are shown in the following table:

1 bit color:2 color palette: black and white 1 bit color:2 color palette: blue and white

4 bit color:16 color palette: Windows 16 color palette used for screen graphics 8 bit color:256 color palette:

8 bit grayscale: 256 shade grayscale palette: 24 bit color: (No palette used)

Quite different from color resolution Refer to the number of pixels (picture elements, or dots) used to represent the image Image Resolution Has relationship to device resolution – screen’s display resolution Computer image – displayed as a series of pixels arranged in rows and columns Bitmapped images – stored as a large array of colored dots that from a distance seem to merge together to give recognizable picture

Stated as part of product’s specification Apparently on the packaging, in manuals and in the literature for the device Device Resolution Primary devices  Input device (scanners)  Display devices (video card, monitor)  Output device (printer)