History of Color Printing
The history of color printing is, well, quite colorful. Imagine artists skilfully coloring pages of texts during the Renaissance ... far before the first color printing press was ever conceived.
The nineteenth century was just brimming with technological advancements, but color illustration was still in its archaic stages. Artists would use large color plates in order to illustrate a work, and this type of illustration often took weeks to complete. The history of color printing eventually gave the artists a break when the first photo-reproductive techniques were utilized – not only was this new technology simple, it also put a lot of artists out of work! Many fine examples of these earlier texts still exist, though they are somewhat hard to get your hands on today.
Eventually, the computer age came about and color printing rarely had anything to do with humans at all. When the computer took over the printing world, color printing was a lot more cost effective to produce (as opposed to those weary hands of an artist), but computer generated color prints were also of a lesser quality. Early computer prints didn’t quite grasp the concept of deep, saturated, color. However, computer printing was, after a while, improved upon and color printing (as we now know it) was born.
The history of color printing is so interesting to think about (imagine all those pages that had to be dried before they were bound!) that entire books have been written detailing the old printing process. In fact, there are some publishing houses throughout the world that still use artists to paint each illustration. Some people believe that hand printing produces a richer color than a computer does, which is why hand illustrations can fetch a large amount around the globe.
Have you ever had the chance to really look at a hand painted illustration? If you compare an artists drawing to a computer print out, you will see a huge difference. Still, hiring hundreds of artists to create storybook pages is just not practical.
History has a funny way of repeating itself, but the history of color printing is likely locked in the pages of the past forever. Color printing has come a long way since its humble beginnings, and though artist may not color the pages of texts anymore, color printing is still an art form all on its own.