Desktop Colour Separation (DCS) is an enhanced

Encapsulated PostScript Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) is a Document Structuring Convention (DSC) conforming PostScript document format usable as a graphics file format. The format was developed as early as 1987 by John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, the founders of Adobe ...

file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...

that was introduced by

Quark, Inc. Quark Software Inc. (founded 1981 in Denver, Colorado, USA) is a privately owned software company which specializes in enterprise publishing software for automating the production of customer communications. The company's original goal was to "c ...

It is now primarily used for specialised graphics work particularly images that use multiple channels, e.g. when applying different spot colours to each part of a greyscale image.

Format

In DCS a

CMYK The CMYK color model (also known as process color, or four color) is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation ''CMYK'' refer ...

graphic is separated into five files; a main file and four pre-separation files, one for each CMYK process colour. The main file contains an indication of which separation files are needed and where to find them, together with a composite image information which is used to print a composite of the image.

Operation

When output to a

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, ...

printer Printer may refer to: Technology * Printer (publishing), a person or a company * Printer (computing), a hardware device * Optical printer for motion picture films People * Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist * James ...

, the printer driver reads the information in the main file and assigns the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black files to their corresponding

separation files Separation may refer to: Films * ''Separation'' (1967 film), a British feature film written by and starring Jane Arden and directed by Jack Bond * ''La Séparation'', 1994 French film * '' A Separation'', 2011 Iranian film * ''Separation'' (2 ...

References

External links

Colour Separation
PrintWiki. *{{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160822053426/http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/316726.html , date=August 22, 2016 , title=Desktop Colour Separation (DCS) General Information, Lynn Powers, Adobe Inc., 1993-12-10 Computer file formats