"Dave" wrote in
:

Sorry to ask this at this point, but does it make any difference as to
which colour is put down first?

Yes. For a simple three-colour run, yellow is often the topmost ink as
it has the least capacity for hiding the lower inks. Printers have
different views of the optimum order. But with a large modern press,
there might be ten or more actual printing stations each laying down a
different ink. (Not all inks will necessarily be used for all jobs.)
Changing the order from run to run is not feasible. So there is probably
some order that is regarded as standard for a particular printing
process/set of inks/press.

When making colour plates, the dot pattern is produced at
different angles for each ink (up to a point, difficult with large
numbers of inks) so that there is less chance of a later ink completely
obliterating an earlier one. The differing angles basically ensure that
the dots in one layer cannot perfectly align with the dots in another
layer. This lessens the criticality of the printing order.

Paint primaries are red, blue and yellow and, in emulsion paint,
are
opaque.

Can this be explained to me? I must add that I am some what colour
blind here. I was diagnosed as red green colour blind as a child and
it has haunted me since.

My partner's son is also red-green, umm, confused. Hence we have looked
around to try to understand the issues. If you have never seen it,
http://www.vischeck.com/ is quite amazing. Also,
http://www.tsi.enst.fr/~brettel/colourblindness.html

--
Rod

www.annalaurie.co.uk