Rev 1.

Core Skills Training

Colour Science and Theory

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Course Prerequisites
• This course has no prerequisites, but may used as a
prerequisite for other courses.

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Course Introduction
• The devices we use today to photograph, scan, copy, view
and print use different methods to handle colour. This is
the root of all true “colour matching” problems.
• In this course, you will learn:
– Colour Perception,
– How we see Colour,
– RGB vs. CMY Colour Gamut,
– Colour Management,
– Pantone®.

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Colour Perception
• When viewing colour on your computer monitor or on
paper, the following 3 things will drastically change your
perception of the colour:
– Paper brightness
– Ambient lighting (room lighting)
– Monitor calibration
• These will be discussed on the following pages.

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Colour Perception
• Paper brightness: optimal brightness is 94-96. Below 94-
96 will look brownish and above 96 will look bluish.
• Any variation from pure white will cause the colour on the
page to be altered.
• As an example, look at the difference in the apple on bright
green paper instead of white.

96
80*
106

*Most General Purpose Copy Paper has a Brightness of 80.

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Colour Perception
• Ambient lighting: to perceive colour accurately, colour should be
viewed with white light from the sun.
• Most buildings use lighting that alters our perception of colour:
– Incandescent bulbs emit more Yellow light waves
– Fluorescent Bulbs emit more Blue light waves.
• Look at the three printed pictures below. This is how they look in
different lighting.
White Light Incandescent Light Florescent Light

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Colour Perception
• Monitor calibration: if your monitor is not calibrated, what you view
may not match the output on a printer or another monitor.
• Much like printing on pure white paper, calibrating a monitor adjusts
various colour settings for optimal viewing (you will learn more about
this later in the course).
• Look at the difference in the apple viewed on the monitors below.

Calibrated Not Calibrated

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Colour Perception
• Colour is subjective by nature. A colour that looks “correct”
to you may not to someone else.
• Adobe Incorporated captured the complexity of colour in
the following quote:
“Reproducing consistent colour can be the most difficult part of the design and
production process. Yet, it's often something that gets taken for granted until a proof
of the final output reveals that you didn't get the colours you expected. The bright
red apple that you photographed, scanned, and placed in PageMaker has lost some of
its luster and you're perplexed at why this should be. Unfortunately, it's natural.
You can't get the apple on your printed page to look like the apple you hold in your
hand. It can look similar, but not the same, and it's all due to the nature of colour
and the processes used to reproduce it.”
- Adobe Systems Incorporated

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How we see Colour

• So, how do we see colour? The sun produces many light waves in the
visible spectrum but the three predominant ones are Red, Blue and
Green or RGB.
• When these light waves strike an object, the object absorbs some of
the light and reflects the rest to our eyes. This is how we see colour.
• Since we start with white light and subtract certain wavelengths, this
type of colour is called Subtractive. Printers produce colour in this
way.
Green and Blue
Eye
Light Reflected

Light Cyan

R G B

Red Light Absorbed by

Cyan ink/toner Cyan ink/toner
Paper
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How we see Colour

• A printer makes colour by using Cyan, Magenta and Yellow (CMY)
colours on a white background. All of these are Subtractive colours.
• If you combine 100% each of CMY together on white paper, they
absorb the RGB wavelengths and your eyes will see Black.
• Even though combining CMY will produce Black, the colour is very
“muddy” in appearance. The printer uses the Black (K) colour so the
black images will not look “muddy”.
• The Black colour produced by combining CMY is called “Process
Black”.

Process Black

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How we see Colour

• How do we see the millions of colours that a printer can reproduce?
• This is achieved by an optical illusion. The printer arranges the CMYK
colours in various dot patterns, densities and angles to give our eyes
the illusion of different colours.
• Look at the example below:
What our eyes see What is actually printed A close-up of the CMYK dots

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How we see Colour

• With computer monitors, colour is produced in a completely
different way.
• The computer monitor starts with a black background and
projects light to your eyes by creating little Red, Green,
and Blue lights at various intensities.
• For each pixel on the screen, you have one light each of
Red, Green and Blue.

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How we see Colour

• Since your monitor creates colour, the Red Green and
Blue lights produced are Additive colours.
• If you combine Red, Green and Blue together, you get
white light.

White

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How we see Colour

• Like your printer, the computer monitor can produce millions of colours
and uses an optical illusion to produce the colours we see.
• The monitor “turns on” tiny Red, Green and Blue lights at various light
intensities (0-255). Our eyes see the illusion of different colours
depending on the colours projected, their light intensity and the pattern
of arrangement.
• Look at the example below. It shows the original picture and then the
Red, Green and Blue lights emitting separately. When the RGB lights
emit together, it forms the picture.

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Colour Gamut
• Theoretically, mixing various intensities of red, green and blue light can
produce all colours of the visible spectrum.
• Monitors and printers, however, are capable of displaying only a limited
colour range (called a gamut) of the visible spectrum.
– A Gamut is the full range of colours that can be produced by any colour
reproduction system.
• Interestingly enough, this colour range (or gamut) is not the same for
the monitor and printer. Consequently, the same art displayed on a
computer monitor may not match what is printed on the printer!

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Colour Gamut
• Look at the CIE xy chromaticity diagram below. The coloured
horseshoe area shows the entire visible colour spectrum. The RGB
and CMY colour ranges are located within it.
• If any colour falls in the areas where the RGB and CMY colour ranges
do not match, the colour will look different on the monitor than what is
printed on the printer.

The
The colour
colour ranges
ranges represented
represented in in Monitor
the
the diagram
diagram are
are only
only examples.
examples.
Each
Each printer, monitor, etc.
printer, monitor, etc. will
will have
have
its No Match
its own
own unique
unique colour
colour range.
range.

No Match

Printer

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Colour Management
• To match colours as closely as possible, a Colour Management
system has been standardized by the International Colour Consortium
(ICC) and runs in the background on nearly every computer.
• The purpose of colour management is to obtain the best colour match
possible across different colour devices. In other words, it looks at the
monitor and printer colour gamuts and translates the colour information
from RGB to CMY.
• Colour management theory is complex. For this training, we will only
cover the basics.
• The next page shows an illustration of how the Colour Management
system works.

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Colour Management

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Colour Management
• To get colours to match as close as possible, there are several things
you can do:
– Test the printer by checking supply life information and printing self
test pages. If the printer’s supplies are low or it is not functioning properly,
then matching the colour on the computer monitor is not possible.
– Calibrate the Monitor. By doing this, you create a profile that the Colour
Management system uses to help in colour translation. Factors such as
ambient lighting, peculiarities of your monitor, etc. are taken into
consideration. You should calibrate the monitor frequently.
– Use a Paper Brightness of 94-96. The colour table built into your printer
assumes the colour will be printed on white paper. A 94-96 Brightness is
optimal.
– Use graphic design programs for critical colour matching. Programs
such as Microsoft® PowerPoint are not intended to function as a pre-press
graphic design applications, therefore, the printed output may not match
your monitor.

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Pantone®
• For graphic designers, or for those wanting to reproduce a specific
colour, the Pantone® colour matching system exists industry wide.
• You can specify particular colours by indicating the Pantone® name or
number within graphic applications such as Adobe® Photoshop.
• By using this colour matching system, the right colour will print even if it
doesn’t look correct when viewing it on your monitor.

Pantone® swatches in
Photoshop

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Pantone®
• To aid with colour matching, most of Lexmark’s printers have been
Pantone® Calibrated.
• This means that a colour swatch table has been specially developed by
Pantone® colour scientists for a specific printer model.
• Once calibrated, the colour data is optimized so you can get the best
possible representation of the Pantone Matching System® Solid
Colour Coated Library.
• During calibration, factors such as the specific driver/RIP, device
settings, ink set, colour engine and paper stock are taken into
consideration since they can affect colour output.
• The printable PDF colour charts for each calibrated printer are
available at:
http://www.pantone.com/pages/calibratedprinters/calibratedprinters.aspx

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Pantone®
• As an example, the diamond uses Pantone® colour 485.
• To reproduce this colour accurately, download the PDF colour chart for
your printer and find Pantone® Color 485 CS. The CMYK values will
be listed.
• Once you have these values, you can input these into your graphic
design program to reproduce the correct colour when printed.

Photoshop Colour
Picker

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Summary
• Colour matching is one of the most challenging tasks you may face. It
is important to remember to rule out a printer problem before
trying to match colour.
– Most perceived “colour matching” problems are actually a problem with a
supply or the printer.
• If the printer is not at fault, try printing on a premium laser paper. A
24lb 94 Brightness is optimal.
• In addition, calibrate the monitor. There are many programs available
to do this. Some are free while others cost money.
– Search on the internet for “Monitor Calibration” and you will find many
products from which to choose.

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Summary
• In the end, your monitor and printer produce colour differently and don’t
have the same colour ranges. Even Pantone® will only guarantee the
best possible reproduction, not an exact match.
• For more information on any of the topics in this course, you are
encouraged to search the Internet. Below are a few links to get you
started:

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color

International Colour Consortium:

http://www.color.org/index.xalter

Pantone:
http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/index.aspx
Adobe:
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=320624&sliceId=2

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Colour Science and Theory

This concludes the module on
Colour Science and Theory.

You may review the study material again or continue to the

next phase of this course.

1/16/2008 Lexmark Confidential