Read the chapter provided about colour theory.
Colour provides dynamism to a design, attracting the attention of the viewer, and perhaps eliciting an emotional response. Colour can also be used by a designer to help organize the elements on a page and lead the eye from one item to another, or instill hierarchy.
Describing colour: It has different wavelengths of light, design and colour professionals use different values of hue, saturation and brightness to describe it. Designers use two main colour models, as illustrated below, that relate to work on screen (RGB), and printed work (CMYK).
RGB: Used for websites (Red, Green & Blue)
CMYK: Used for printing (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black)
Brightness, Hue & Saturation: These terms help a designer to specify and communicate colour information and help overcome the potential vagaries of computer screens and printing presses where a colour is not always what it seems. Accurate colour description in terms of the hue, saturation and brightness helps a designer and printer meet the expectations of a client.
Brightness/Value: It refers to how light or dark a colour can be. It’s achieved by mixing white and black with it.
Hue: It’s another word for colour and it can help identify one colour to another by its unique characteristics.
Saturation/Chroma: Its when colours move towards or away from grey making it saturated.
Gamut & Colour space: They are used by designers and printers to calculate the range of colours are being produced in a set colorants in a particular system.
Gamut: in the printing industry the most common systems are RGB, CYMK and now Hexachrome which is CYMKOG (orange and green). these are particular systems.
Colour space: In graphic design and printing industries produces or reproduces a certain array of colours called a colour space.
For example, RGB is the additive primary colour space that computer monitors use and CMYK is the subtractive primary colour space used in the four-colour printing process. Digital cameras, printers and scanners all have colour space which is able to reproduce a set colourant.
A digital camera records light as pixels and each pixel records red, green or blue light values. The colour space provides a definition for the numeric value of this combination of colours present in a pixel, with each value representing a different colour. Changing the colour space will change the colour associated to this value, which means that while creating a design or making adjustments to images, it is necessary to be aware of the colour space that is being worked in.
Pantone and colour spots: Graphic Designers use spot colours to ensure that a particular colour in a design will print. This may be necessary if the colour is outside the range or gamut of possibilities of the four colour CMYK printing process, or because there is a pressing need for a specific colour, such as for a corporate logo. Special colours have greater intensity and vibrancy as they print as a solid colour rather than one that is composed of half-tone dots, as the panels below show
Mixing a spot: These colours are mixed through specific recipes to get a certain colour by using the pantone colours.
Pantone System: This is a special system used because of the wide range of colour created by pantone. It includes a wide range of RGB, CYMK and Hexachrome. The Pantone system allocates a unique reference number to each hue and shade to facilitate communication between designers and printers.
U = Uncoated C = Coated EC = Euro coated M = Matte
Basic colour adjustments: This tool allows you to make automatic colour adjustments in order to cope with any common problems, such as red eye or colour balance problems in a photo.
The variation command: allows a designer to adjust image colour balance, contrast and saturation while showing thumbnails of the alternatives.
The selective colour command: allows a designer to change the colours within a colour, making it brighter or darker or completely changing the colour for contrast.
Removing colour cast: A colour cast only exist when the colour in the image are not shown properly or isn't the correct colour. This occur mostly in camera when the lighting isn't correct.
Identifying a colour cast by eye: It may be difficult to detect an imbalance in the colours by eye alone, perhaps due to the surrounding lighting conditions or the colour presentation of the computer screen. However, if you know that an image suffers from a colour cast it can often be altered by using a simple colour balance application. Where you are unsure if there is a colour cast, there are two methods (described opposite) to help identify it. (Tone and Colour Balance).
Colour correction using hue: Hue is the colour reflected or transmitted from an object, so adjusting the hue of an image in Photoshop is a quick and easy way of altering its colour. However it can be good and bad.
Dodge and Burn: These effects are used to lighten or darken areas of an image, and are based on techniques traditionally used by photographers to regulate exposure on specific areas of a print
Dodge: Photographers hold back light when exposing photographic film in order to lighten an area of the print. Dodging essentially lightens pixels where you paint.
Burn: Photographers increase the exposure to light when exposing photographic film to darken areas. Burning essentially darkens pixels where you paint.
Colour images: When used with colour prints or images, dodging and burning gives a designer the ability to alter highlights, mid-tones or shadows. Fortunately these techniques are very forgiving so if a bit of background is dodged or burned, it will not be too obvious because these tools alter saturation rather than hue.
Colour layers: These can be used to overlay colour panels on to a base image and these can then be blended in different ways to alter the colour of the original image, while leaving the contrast and detail intact.
Multiple images: Various blend modes can also be used to merge separate images in Photoshop. By combining the colours with each image it will use the colour channels that they are formed with.
Multi-tones: There are duotones, tritones and quadtones are tonal images produced from a monotone original with the use of two-, three- or four-colour tones, normally offset against a black base tone.
Monotones: One colour being used in an image.
Duotones: It’s two colours being combined together e.g. yellow and black.
Tritones: Three colours are being combined together in order to make an image have shadows, brightness and hues.
Quadtone: Is adding a fourth colour to the mix and this can preset the values which can create specific effects.
Preparing colour in print: Designers must always carry out a number of pre-press checks to see if the colour, image and font are easy for the designers, printer and client to read to communicate. This is vitally important if the client is to end up with the work that they have been expecting. It also allows to see if there’s any problems before printing.
Printed pages and panels: Printed pages (or PP) refers to the actual number of pages printed and not the number of sheets printed on. This can be in a booklet or in photoshop.
Tints and mixing colours: Process and special colours can be combined using tints and overprinting to produce many different colour effects.
Tints: The three trichromatic process colours (cyan, magenta and yellow) can be printed in increments of ten per cent to produce 1,330 tints (or over 15,000 if black is included as well). Sometimes the effect may not come properly due tp dot gain.
Overprinting: is where one ink overprints another so that they mix to create different colours. As colour theory dictates, overprinting pairs of the three trichromatic subtractive primary process colours produces the additive primary colours, as shown above. Different blacks can also be achieved with overprinting. Designers do this to make print images and photos.
Multi ink: Two or more process colours can be combined to create new colour combinations using the multi-ink function.
Tint charts: The chart below shows the 121 tint variations that can be obtained when cyan and black are combined in ten per cent increments. Over 1,000 different tints can be produced by combining the cyan, magenta and yellow process colours together in a similar way as shown in the swatches opposite, with even more variations possible if black is added as well. Over 300 tints can be obtained by combining one of the process colours with black and the same amount again by using single tints of these colours.
These swatches enable a designer to obtain a reasonable idea of the colour that will result when combining tints of the different process colours. However, the accuracy of these representations depends upon colour control during the printing process, the press used and the stock that a design is printed upon.
Using tints allows a designer to increase the range of colour possibilities available when the budget for a job is insufficient to cover the cost of four-colour printing. Instead of being limited to the use of two single colours, for example, a designer still has a varied, although limited, colour palette available.
Web safe colours: There are 216 colours that are safe to use especially for web design. Some monitors can go up to 256 colours however, The web-safe colour palette allows for the production of six shades of red, green and blue. So, these can be distinguished individually.
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