Color separations

four color separations
term applied to negatives, positives, or stencils each having the ultimate printing responsibility for one of the four colors used in four color process printing; namely, magenta, cyan, yellow and black.

Desktop Color Separations format is a version of the standard EPS format that lets you save not only the file or image but also its CMYK or multichannel color separations you see in the Channels palette. DCS 2.0 allows you to save spot channels too.

Mask: In color separations, an intermediate lithographic negative or positive used in color correction and employed during the direct screening method.

" An additional option for printing color separations in CMYK mode is also present, but we won't go into that here since all desktop printers are RGB devices.

This type of film is often used to produce digital scans or color separations for mass-market printing. Photographic prints can be produced from reversal film, but the process is expensive and not as simple as that for print film.

Registration mark. A mark that appears on a printed image, generally for color separations, to help in aligning the printing plates. Many applications, such as Photoshop, can add registration marks to your images when they are printed.

See also: Color, Printing, Color separation, Separations, Digital