Colour theory in practice

Question 1

Pointillism

Answer 1

Pointillism is a painting technique that uses small dots of high-intensity colors to create an optical mixture, most effective when viewed from a distance. Notable artists include Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.

Question 2

Impressionism

Answer 2

Impressionism is a late-nineteenth century art movement from France that focuses on capturing the optical appearance of the world. Impressionist painters aimed to depict fleeting visual sensations, emphasizing light and atmosphere. Their works feature broken brushwork, soft forms, and vibrant colors. Notable artists include Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Claude Monet.

Question 3

Expressionism

Answer 3

Expressionism is an art movement emphasizing the subjective and emotional experiences of individuals, often using bold colors and distorted forms to express inner turmoil. Key artists include Edvard Munch, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Paula Modersohn-Becker.Munch, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

Question 4

Continuous-Tone Art

Answer 4

An original photograph, drawing, or painting is sometimes called continuous-tone art. If you look closely at continuous-tone art, you will see that it consists of shades of gray or colour that blend smoothly and seamlessly together. Scanned images that contain a range of colour tones are called continuous-tone images.

Question 5

Halftone Screens

Answer 5

To reproduce continuous-tone images in commercial printing, colors are broken down into dots of varying sizes, known as a halftone screen. Black dots are used for black and white images.

Question 6

Colour Halftone

Answer 6

Cyan, magenta, yellow, and black dots are printed at different angles to create a full range of colors. When properly registered, these four halftone screens form a rosette pattern, minimizing moiré from interference patterns.

Question 7

Spot Colours and Tints

Answer 7

Spot colours are printed with premixed inks on a printing press. There are thousands of potential spot colours, codified by the Pantone corporation. Each spot colour is reproduced using a single printing plate. A spot colour printed at 100% is a solid colour and has no dot pattern. A tint is a lightened spot of process colour and is created by printing smaller halftone dots of the base spot colour. This is also called screening the colour.

Question 8

Process Colours

Answer 8

Process colours are created by printing overlapping dots of cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) inks to simulate a wide range of colours. These inks are transparent, allowing some colours to be absorbed and others reflected. For example, combining cyan and magenta dots results in the perception of blue.

While mixing 100% cyan, magenta, and yellow could theoretically create black, it instead produces a muddy brown due to ink imperfections. Additionally, too much ink can oversaturate the area and degrade print quality. To achieve strong shadows and detail, printers use black ink (key colour), leading to the CMYK printing process.

Question 9

Duotone

Answer 9

A duotone consists of two overlapping colors, usually black and a spot color, created from grayscale images. Black areas are mostly printed with black, mid-tones combine black and the spot color, and lighter areas use only tints of the spot color.

Question 10

Pantone

Answer 10

Pantone is a standardized system for premixing spot colors used in process printing. It offers a wide range of color combinations, including tints and shades. The main advantages of spot colors are avoiding dot patterns and achieving more accurate and intense colors compared to CMYK process printing.

Question 11

Hexachrome

Answer 11

Hexachrome is a seven-color printing process that adds orange, green, and purple to the standard CMYK, referred to as high-fidelity color printing. Its use has declined with advancements in digital printing.

Question 12

Vector Graphics

Answer 12

Vector graphics are created from mathematically defined curves and lines called vectors, allowing for resolution-independent editing by adjusting the object or its components. In contrast, raster graphics, or bitmap images, consist of pixels, making them resolution-dependent. They don’t lose quality if enlarged and are edited by manipulating pixel groups.

Question 13

Raster Graphics

Answer 13

Raster graphics, or bitmap images, consist of a grid of pixels, each containing color information that affects the file size. A 24-bit color image is larger than an 8-bit version. Unlike vector graphics, which are edited by changing lines and shapes, raster images are modified by adjusting pixels through proprietary algorithms. They are resolution-dependent and can appear jagged if created at a low resolution and enlarged.

Question 14

Editing

Answer 14

Photoshop (*.psd) is used for manipulating layered files that other formats can’t save. Other software like Microsoft Paint and Corel Painter have their own proprietary formats.

Question 15

Printing

Answer 15

Twin Integrated File Format (.tif) exchanges bitmap images between applications, while Encapsulated PostScript (.eps) can contain both vector and raster graphics. Portable Document Format (*.pdf) is compressed, ideal for sharing completed documents, but offers limited editing.

Question 16

Multimedia

Answer 16

Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpg) is a lossy raster format that reduces image quality for smaller file sizes. Graphical Interchange Format (.gif) is for solid-tone images, like logos, with a narrow color range.