Printing White 'Color'

[davidh202]

 Really dumb one here...

    I have a poster I created with a white border background. White values in CS5 are 255 each in RGB.
Does the printer create a process white from the ink, or does 'white' simply become the paper white with no ink used to create the color'white'?

[KeithR]

You cannot get any whiter that the paper white. No inks are capable of creating a white whiter than the paper.

[michael]

What some people do is pull 255 down to about 250, which forces the printer to print a very faint pattern. This helps to reduce gloss differential, which is seen when there is no ink laid down in a blank area.

Some printers (HP) can print a gloss coating over blank areas so as to avoid gloss differential.

Michael

[neile]

Brooks Jensen wrote a good article on this, titled "Chasing Highlight Tones". You can find it at http://technology.lenswork.com/2010/04/chasing-highlight-tones.html.

Neil

[Farmer]

You cannot get any whiter that the paper white. No inks are capable of creating a white whiter than the paper.

Well, depends on the paper.  Epson Stylus Pro WT7900 has white ink.