Sorry, if I wasn't clear (or is that transparent?). The point I was
making is that yellow is the primary determinant of the color balance
in a print made with a 3-color process. If your process allows for it,
then you might want to "sneak up" on the correct color balance by
printing multiple "thin" layers of yellow. Of course it only works if
the yellow is transparent to begin with. I wasn't suggesting it as a
cure for a yellow that was too opaque.
This is something that I've done with dye transfer, going over two or
three times with the yellow printer and thus increasing the density of
the yellow dye in the receiving paper. With silkscreen, I've actually
taken the yellow screen and used it to print a very thin "tint" as a
fourth or fifth layer after the yellow layer. This was only when I
felt that the original three colors didn't provide the right color
balance. None of this works if the pigment or dye isn't transparent
enough to begin with.
The reasons for this have to do with the fact that I (and I suspect
most of us making color separations) can't make perfectly balanced
separations, no matter what masks I make or care I take. Nor do I
really want to if I can deal with reasonable color imbalances in the
printing process. This isn't the kind of approach that commercial press
operators take. There they need extremely standardized processes and
the ability for mass replication. In this case a CMY order isn't going
to buy any additional flexibility.
Luis, if you're reading this, I'm curious as to the printing order of
the Fresson process. As I recall, the registration of the second and
third layer is done by eye. I assume that either cyan or magenta is the
first layer printed as I can't see how you could eyeball a yellow
layer. Also, do you care to talk about the pigment used for the yellow
layer? If it isn't proprietary, knowing what it is would probably be
helpful to gum printers, because Fresson is (to my poor uneducated mind
at least) just a fancy gum print done with an enlarger :-)
Carson Graves
carson@ileaf.com
Please... I didn't mean it Luis, really.... aghhhh....