Process Printing vs. 6 Color Ink Jet Printing
See the difference below!

Four color "process" printing is the  method used in printing art books with color images and in most mass produced prints or posters, like the ones sold in art museum stores. The left image below was made by scanning a museum art print of Renoir's famous painting, "By the Seashore." It is an example of four color process printing. The image on the right was made by a six color ink jet printer. Anyone familiar with the original painting, available for viewing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, would notice that the image on the right is closer to the true colors. When viewing Renoir's original painting, one is struck by the powerful shades of blue that he used in his painting and the porcelain complexion of the young lady. In the museum print those breath-taking blues are not in evidence , and her complexion has a red cast as does the entire museum print. What a difference!

4 Color process museum print

6 color ink jet print

Comparison of the Adobe RGB (1998)
working space to generic CMYK.

The red-green-blue colored area in the graphic above represents all the possible colors
that exist . Within that colored area is the Adobe RGB color gamut (or profile) compared
to the CMYK color gamut. The Adobe RGB profile is the larger of the two. One can
visually see that there are many colors within the Adobe RGB color gamut
that are outside the CMYK color gamut. The Adobe RGB profile approximates the color
gamut that a good six color ink jet printer can produce, whereas the CMYK color profile
represents the limitations of a CMYK printer. CMYK printers are used to produce most
color art books and the prints and posters offered for sale in most museum art shops.

 

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