Chapter 19 Essay
Instructor Roberts
ARV

Trapping Trapping is what most try to avoid and do not like to talk about much. Trapping is only a method of adjusting areas where two distinct adjacent colors meet so that press misregistration won’t cause the white spaces. But trapping is simply to minimize the effects of misregistration so commercial printers created this technique. Now misregistration is what the book calls the colors “out of registration” (245) which it when pictures or objects look like they are out of position. It occurs also when the paper on the printing press shifts or the plate moves. This process cannot be prevented so when it occurs it causes a gap between the colors where the white paper shows through. Another printing occurrence is a hole called a knockout. A knockout is when you make the separations for your file, the top object knocks a hole in the bottom object. When the two plates are registered or misregistered either the top object will sit perfectly inside the knockout or slightly off from the knockout creating the slight gap and you can see the gap if printed on white paper. There is something called overlap too, that occurs if the knockout is slightly smaller or the bigger than the top object which would provide an area where the two colors are overlapping. To prevent the gap one object would need to move slightly. The overlap is a trap in which you can see it when it’s in printed pieces. So learning to prevent or avoid trapping could be unnecessary because it’s not a big worry for