All About Color

Carl Shank • September 5, 2022

All About Color. In modern typography and printing, the use of color, once thought too expensive, is now commonplace. Color laser printers are found in many offices, churches and certainly printer shops. Not many people, however, understand the science of color and how we get colored images and scans to the printed page. So, while I am certainly no expert in color technology, here are a few definitions and pointers in color printing.


DPI vs LPI. Let's start at the beginning. Every laser printer has a DPI, or dots per inch, that it places on a sheet of paper. Many older laser printers are rated at least at 300 DPI, with many more today at 600 DPI and above. What is DPI? Dots Per Inch (DPI) is literally a measurement of the maximum number of dots any printer has access to per inch. The dots reference the unit in which all printers and computers are measured, namely, binary code. As such, each dot is either off or on. These dots make up a grid pattern which can only print in black and white. There are no colors or shades of colors (such as grey). The higher the DPI the "smoother" the print looks to the human eye.


LPI, or Lines per Inch, is a measurement of the number of rounded dots that are in an inch. LPI is also known as a screen, and is given its name because each rounded dot has a centre point that’s created in varying sizes. The LPI is directly related to the DPI which is directly related to resolution. Depending on the resolution, one may acquire a picture that seems ‘grainier’ than others – that is, pixilated. For instance, to get a dot that actually appears round rather than square, or pixilated, one must have a DPI of at least 600. A glossy magazine is usually printed with an LPI of 150; as it relates to DPI, which means that the resolution was 2400 DPI or higher. 53 LPI is typical of an office laser. Newspapers are about 90 LPI.


Halftones. We use halftones to print tints. This uniform field of small dots lets paper show through. The more paper that shows through, the lighter the tint. The bigger the spots, the darker the tint. A halftone is measured in lines per inch (LPI). The more lines per inch, the finer the halftone (See Sample Below). To camouflage the rows of spots, a halftone is printed at an angle. If we printed a black halftone at 0 degrees we would see the rows of dots. So printing at an angle tricks our eyes so that we do not realize we are seeing rows and columns of dots at all. Now we are ready to talk about color.


About Color. Color exists as an effect of light. The white light from say the sun is made up of a rainbow of impulses that our brain interprets as colors. All the colors of the rainbow, when added up, make a white light. They are called primary additive colors. (See "All About Color" below.) Computer monitors use three primary colors —Red, Green and Blue—otherwise know as RGB. Since the colors of objects are really white light minus the waves absorbed by the object, they are called primary subtractive colors, otherwise knows as printing colors, or CMYK colors—Cyan, made up of blue and green, Magenta, made up of blue and red, Yellow, made up of red and green. (See "All About Color" below). The K color is actually Black, usually added to give strength and body to a printed picture or image.


Color separations are used for each of the four process colors by a professional lithographic printer. The final result of a color separation is four sheets of film, one for each of the process colors. The films are then used to create the four plates of a process-color printing press.


Going back to halftone angles. Black, the most visible, is printed at a 45 degree angle, Cyan at a 75 degree angle, Magenta at a 15 degree angle, and Yellow at a 0 degree angle. Four halftones are superimposed on each other. To minimize any interference patterns (called "moirés") the halftones are angled 30 degrees apart, yielding a tight, nondistracting compilation. Technological improvements now create microdots that don't use any angles at all. The spots now fall side by side, not atop one another and fit so neatly together that the viewer is unaware spots even exist in their image or photo.

Read More:  Difference Between DPI and LPI | Difference Between http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-dpi-and-lpi/#ixzz7dy33lfNT. I am indebted to Jan V. White as well for his "Understanding Color Separations." See his book, Color For Impact. Also Mix & Match: Designer's Colors, Quarto Publishing, 1990. Also, credit to John McWade, Before & After, Vol 4, No. 2, 1994.


Successful Layout & Design

Compositors & Type: Origin and Use of “Uppercase” and “Lowercase”

By Carl Shank • June 13, 2026
Compositors & Type: Origin and Use of “Uppercase” and “Lowercase” Carl Shank, CARE Typography Most everyone knows what “uppercase” and “lowercase” letters are. They refer, of course, to our “capital” letters and our “regular” small print. But not many know why or how they came to be known by such terminology. The answer is found in the history and development of typography and printing. “Case” here doesn’t refer to “circumstance” or “condition.” It refers to the wooden trays used to store metal letters, the top case for capital letters (“uppercase”) and the lower case for small letters. Each tray was divided into compartments to hold the type. The lower case also held the punctuation marks and other pieces of type, like “spacers.” The type case was a shallow wooden tray divided into compartments of various sizes. There were about thirty styles of type cases, and some of these were made in different sizes.[1] The most common, or standard, size was 32¼ by 16 inches, outside dimensions, and ⅛ inches deep, inside. One of three traditional plans or schemes for such type cases involved (1) all characters in one case; (2) capitals, small capitals and a few other characters in one case; or (3) the small letters, figures, points, spaces and quads in another case. The two latter cases formed a pair and would nearly always be used together.(See Images) Hand compositors (or “swifts”) would take individual letters, spaces and punctuation marks or other characters from the type case and place them in what was called a composing “stick” in such a manner that when the type characters are properly assembled, they form words, sentences and paragraphs. The work of the press room compositor was divided into two fundamental operations — the “setting” of type and the “unsetting” of type. The former was called composition and the latter, distribution. A visual example of such typesetting can be seen in some of the episodes of The Waltons, an American historical dramatelevision series about a family in rural western Virginia in the Appalachian/Blue Ridge mountains chain, during the economic hardships and mass unemployment of the Great Depression in the 1930s and the subsequent United State home front during World War II in the 1940s. The series aired from 1972 to 1981. John-Boy, a leading character of the series, opened a print shop in a shed by the family home with an old-fashioned mechanical printer that required setting cold metal type from a type case. His brother was the compositor while John-Boy ran the printing machine.

Vanity Type

By Carl Shank • June 6, 2026
Reading through an old volume of Frederick Nelson Phillips, Inc, Type Faces:With Which We 'Prove It With Proofs' in Typography for Advertisements (New York, 1924), I came across some type that falls outside of the standard typography models, called "vanity type." The term “vanity typography” is not a formal category in typographic history like Old Style, Transitional, Modern, or Sans Serif. Designers typically use the phrase informally to describe typography that draws attention primarily to itself rather than serving the text or reader. Vanity typography occurs when type is used as a display of the designer's skill, fashion, or personal taste rather than to improve communication. Readability is sometimes sacrificed for self-expression and artistic flair. Such type styles use excessive ornamentation, decorative letterforms, overuse of effects like shadows, outlines, gradients and distortions, unusual spacing, and generally typography used to impress rather than inform. Notice in the sample by Phillips, the different "A's," "F's,", "G's," "H's," "L's," "M's," "S's," T's" and "W's." This is not calligraphy lettering, but rather type that could have been used for verses or opening letters to paragraphs or stories.
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