Traditional printing processes usually consist of three basic colorants, i.e., cyan, magenta, and yellow, for their inherent subtractive color nature. Black colorant is sometimes adopted to optimize a printing system between stable neutrality, lower colorant consumption, and achieving higher reflection density. The capability of printing extra color(s) is used in two scenarios: accent colors to precisely matching colors, and light colors, such as light cyan and light magenta, to further enhance image quality. The advantage of adopting light colors to improve print quality such as granularity is its low development cost compared with significantly improving the corresponding complicated fundamental printing process; however, it requires better halftone design, precise supplemental colorant replacement strategies, and imposing an extra cost per page compared with the traditional printing process. We will address this system optimization process by quantifying the overall graininess reduction and its corresponding colorant consumption increase.
Chunghui Kuo, Hwai-Tzuu Tai, Peter Alexandrovich, Frederick Gilley, "Printing System Optimization via Supplemental Light Colorants" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP25), 2009, pp 532 - 535, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2009.25.1.art00035_2