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Screen Printing Tip of the Week: Using the Process Color Selector Wheel



May 27, 2015

We recently found some old promotional and marketing materials in our warehouse, as well as a box of process color selector wheels — once standard tools in a printer’s shop.

A quick Internet check revealed that these color selector wheels still are being sold today. How are they different from regular color wheels? These process color selector wheels allow the user to choose or check a CMYK color value before proofing or printing. Hence, they were widely used by printers, graphic designers, color separators and even ad agencies.

How does it work? A regular color wheel illustrates the relationship between the various colors, but the process color selector wheel actually previews what a color will look like before printing. Four transparent disks of tinted cyan, magenta, yellow and black are mounted on the disk, each printed in 10% increments of color strength — from 0% (clear) to 100% solid color. A viewing window then shows the user the resulting color that a particular four-color combination will produce.

By moving the various color disks around, a printer can produce up to 40,000 different color combinations with specified color percentages to arrive at those colors.


John Hatcher served at International Coatings for more than 35 years in various senior managerial positions, including product manager. Prior to working at International Coatings, he owned his own screen printing business.


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