Adobe InDesign CS3 gives you, right from the first day you use it, all the color controls you could ever wish for. InDesign gives you, right from the first day you use it, all the color controls you could ever wish for. However, with that power comes some responsibility.

When you define colors and use them on your pages, you are wearing two hats. Your first hat is that of a designer who looks at the aesthetics of the page and then applies colors. This is where you have fun with your creativity.

Your second hat is that of production manager. Wearing that hat you need to understand some of the principles of color and printing color documents. You also need to make sure your colors are defined so they print correctly.

The Basics of Color

Here’s a quick primer to help you understand what happens when you define and apply colors in your InDesign layout, as well as other programs.

CMYK stands for the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks that are combined to create other colors. Also called process color, this is the primary type of color used in color printing. Most magazines and brochures are printed using the four process color inks.

RGB stands for the red, green, and blue lights that are used in computer monitors to display colors. Because RGB colors are based on light waves, not inks, there will always be a slight difference between colors defined as RGB and those defined as CMYK. RGB colors can be used to define colors for documents that will be displayed onscreen. But you should not use them for print work.

The LAB is another light-based color model that uses luminance (L) combined with the green to red (A) plus yellow to blue (B). As with RGB, you should not define print colors using this system.

Spot colors are specialty colors that are printed without using the four process color inks. For instance, a metallic gold in a brochure is printed using metallic gold ink, not a combination of CMYK colors. Spot colors can be mixed to display colors that could not be created using simple CMYK colors.

Tints are colors that have been screened so that only a percentage of their color appears on the page.

Mixed inks are combinations of at least one spot color and another spot or process color.



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