Ask any publishing or graphics professional the challenges they face trying to reproduce colors in print as they appear on a screen and you’ll see eyes roll. It’s a difficult trick, and one that costs businesses in many industries more money and time for commercial printing, because inherent technical problems make it time-consuming to precisely match color on a monitor and on a page. But a patent application filed last September suggests that Apple (AAPL) may have a new approach that would make the process more easier and more accurate, saving publishers, retailers, advertisers, and marketers of all stripes plenty of time, money, and aggravation.
The issue in question is color management. Most graphics production whether catalog, Sunday circular, book, magazine, brochure, or reproduction of photograph or art work happens on a computer. When the design is finished, a file goes to a printer for transfer to paper. Unfortunately, monitors and printers don’t work with color the same way. Monitors use additive color, in which red, green, and blue lights (RGB) combine in varying degrees to create all the colors on the screen. Printers, on the other hand, use subtractive color. Light reflects off paper and through transparent inks that filter out color. By correctly overlaying cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) inks, the page shows the final colors.
read full article at: Apple’s New Technology Could Revolutionize Professional Printing » OnlyHardwareBlog.
