Artists use color in many different ways. The colors that we see are light waves reflected or absorbed by everything around us. In nature, a rainbow is actually a white light that is broken apart by the moisture in the air.

The nineteenth century was the turning point for the development of color illustration. At the start of the century, books with colored plates were hand colored by the artist using techniques that dates back to the Renaissance. A hundred years later, the steam driven printing press and the photo reproductive techniques took printing out of the hands of the artist and introduced processes which would be used until the computer revolution of today. article

Today’s color printing uses new technologies and techniques such as digital lithography. Color printing today is generally handled using offset lithography. This printing process coats a rubber drum with the color and water necessary to produce the image. The image is then transferred to the offset drum. From the offset drum the image is transferred to the paper or other printable medium. This process makes it possible to transfer color photographs easily.