Trapping at a Glance

What is Common Density?

This is the degree to which a color is found in common in each separation of two adjacent colors:

What is neutral density?

Neutral density simply refers to the lightness/darkness that a color in the overprint leaves behind on the paper.

Each process color (CMYK) has a different ink strength. Neutral density was defined to determine the strength of an ink on paper, with paper white having a neutral density of 0.

Example of the neutral density for process colors:

The following formula can be used to calculate the "neutral density" in values less than 100%:

The neutral density of all separations is calculated from the sum of the neutral densities of the individual separations.

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