what are color terms?

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sean nakasone

What are the terminology for describing printer colors?

i.e. for house paints, there's color, sheen (flat or gloss), etc.

The reason I'm asking this is because I can't quite seem to match the
colors between a Xerox and HP printer. The reason is because one has more
vibrant colors. What's industry term for vibrancy? What are other terms
are used to describe color?
 
sean nakasone said:
What are the terminology for describing printer colors?

i.e. for house paints, there's color, sheen (flat or gloss), etc.

The reason I'm asking this is because I can't quite seem to match the
colors between a Xerox and HP printer. The reason is because one has more
vibrant colors. What's industry term for vibrancy? What are other terms
are used to describe color?
Click to expand...

Usually when comparing color differences among printers one often hears the
term "color gamut." So you can say that the Xerox has a different color
gamut than the HP. However, as I'm sure you may know paper type and ink
also play a roll in how a print looks. I'm not sure what the term for
"vibrancy" in the printer industry is, but in photography the term
saturation is often used (e.g. Fuji Velvia has much more satuaration that
Fuji Astia).
One other term one might hear is gradient, how well a printer produces
various shades of a particular color.
 
What are the terminology for describing printer colors?

i.e. for house paints, there's color, sheen (flat or gloss), etc.

The reason I'm asking this is because I can't quite seem to match the
colors between a Xerox and HP printer. The reason is because one has
more vibrant colors. What's industry term for vibrancy? What are
other terms are used to describe color?
Click to expand...

Vibrancy or amount of color is called Saturation. Sometimes things seem
"more vibrant" due to either over-saturation (or under-saturation). It
is usually near impossible to exactly match colors between manufactures,
products (and sometimes a device between prints). Xerox and HP have
totally different gamuts, look-up tables, etc.

That is unless your paying large amounts for a device (30K-80K USD) with
something like a Fiery controller....

HP has some pretty good color matching guides you can download from
their website (look under manuals for your product). Not sure about
Xerox resources.
 
You could start from the somewhat controversial,
but useful, site
http://www.aim-dtp.net/
then get a copy of Professional Photoshop (I think it's
now 5th edition with CD) by Dan Margulis, considered
to be a classic.
Then dig into how to work with colour profiles.
You should then be able to understand that your display
has one profile and the output device, inkjet printer,
offset litho printshop, online upload your jpg's, need
profiles.
Then you print on one make of paper and it comes out
different to printing on someone elses paper.
Eventually you complete most of the learning curve.
 
What are the terminology for describing printer colors?

i.e. for house paints, there's color, sheen (flat or gloss), etc.

The reason I'm asking this is because I can't quite seem to match the
colors between a Xerox and HP printer. The reason is because one has more
vibrant colors. What's industry term for vibrancy? What are other terms
are used to describe color?
Click to expand...

Are you using a color managed work flow, including the proper ICC
profiles for the paper being used in each printer?
 
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