Color printing refers to the reproduction of images or text in color (as opposed to black-and-white or monochrome printing). It involves many steps, or conversion processes, to produce high-quality color reproductions. Below are some of the main steps in color printing, along with a bit of its historical development.
### Color Separation Process
The color separation process is used to digitally scan the original artwork, breaking it down into its red, green, and blue components. Before the development of digital imaging, the traditional method of color separation involved photographing the image three times, each time using a filter corresponding to one of the primary colors to filter out different light wavelengths. After separation, the desired result is three grayscale images, each representing the red, green, and blue components of the original artwork.
The next step is to convert each color separation. When generating a negative image for the red component, the resulting image represents the cyan component of the image. Similarly, negatives for the green and blue components are generated to produce magenta and yellow separations respectively.