>
> And about color order -- tho perhaps I begin to stretch the envelope of
> attention span: My old dye transfer notes show that we did magenta, cyan,
> yellow. The Kodak dye transfer book (1980) said cyan magenta yellow. My
> tricolor notes for gum printing say begin with yellow. And in fact Bernie
> now reveals that "when possible" he begins with yellow.
>
> OK?
Sure, whatever you like. But why? As I discovered, doing it in CMY order
offers certain advantages in being able to judge contrast and color balance
qualities "in process." What does printing with yellow first offer?
I did do a silkscreen series in which I tried printing with yellow first
and the most significant thing I noticed was that it was hard if not
impossible to accurately register the next color to it.
>
> And a final bonus for anybody still with us, these words from Southworth
> "Color Separation Techniques" (1979) -- tho he refers to commercial presses:
>
> "...On single-color presses, a printing order that allows the most
> flexibility for adjustment with the 3rd process color is desired. The
> most popular order for single-color presses is cyan, yellow, magenta, and
> black. When magenta is printed 3rd in squence, the pressman has quite a
> bit of latitude to adjust for a pleasing visual effect.... On 4-color
> presses, the printing order is not as well established. Every shop will
> change the printing order depending on the critical colors of each job....
I'm not sure how much of commercial color printing practice can apply
here. In spite of the above quote, yellow is the printing layer in
which you have the most flexibility in adjusting color balance, not
magenta. I suspect that the context in which the quote appears is not
the same as what we are talking about.
Carson