What is index color?
Index color is another separation and printing technique that uses a few ink colors to produce a full color print. Unlike 4-color and simulated process, index color does not use halftones. Rather, the design is broken up into tiny square areas of solid color. These squares are very small ( 200 per inch ) and when printed they blend together to trick the eye into seeing color shades and variations. Index color works well on both white and colored garments but generally takes more ink colors to represent a design with lots of color variation. Index color has the added advantage that you can pick the exact ink colors to use. This way you can more accurately represent colors that are difficult to produce using a “process” method. It also requires high mesh counts to print the tiny squares properly.
Index color is a process where a design with lots of colors is reduced down to a limited color palette using Adobe Photoshop’s Index Color Mode. The process of “indexing” a design also converts the design to a diffusion dither random pixel pattern rather than halftone dot patterns. The design is separated and printed directly from Photoshop, or the file is brought into a drawing program for additional text or graphic elements. Why Use Index Color? The beauty of index color is that because the films have a random dot pattern there is less moiré pattern to the image and images are extremely easy to print. In fact you can use a wide variety of mesh counts and all purpose inks. Index color prints print much easier than process color and every print looks the same. It is also easier to color match with index color. Index separations also work great and print equally as well on both light and dark shirts! This is what really gives the process appeal. A great advantage to them is that there i
