Drop level mixing

The purpose of drop level mixing is to define where each drop level is used.

For example, in a three-drop printer, a small dot is used for the highlights, a medium drop for the mid-tones, and the large drop for the shadows.

In the example below the small dot or drop level 1 is used from page white to 40% density. The medium dot or drop level 2 is used from 30% density to 70% density, so it has an overlap with the small dot's density of 10%. The large dot or drop level 3 is used from 60% density to maximum density 100%, again with an overlap with the medium dot's density of 10%.

If you don't wish to use a particular dot or drop size, then remove the tick from the enabled column.

If you want to limit the ink for this color, enable the ink limit tick box and enter the ink limit; adjust this so that you just overink. Fine tuning of the ink limit is done in step 3. If you limit the ink too much in this stage, then this reduces the printer's color gamut. This control is used here to prevent too much ink from flooding the press or causing the color patches to run into each other and be unreadable.

Using the advanced controls, it is also possible to change the rate at which the transition of dots takes place from one drop size to another.