Print Process beginner mechanicalaccidentalvivid

CMYK Misregistration

Process plates out of alignment, so colour fringes appear and the rosette breaks up.

What it does

Four-colour process depends on cyan, magenta, yellow and black screens rotated 15 to 45 degrees apart so their dots form a tight rosette. When a plate shifts, the rosette breaks and coloured fringes appear at every edge, most visibly on black text which gains a cyan or magenta shadow. Newspaper presses running fast at low cost do this constantly. As a deliberate effect it instantly signals mass-printed rather than screen-rendered.

The prompt

[Subject] printed four-colour process with the magenta plate misregistered by about 1.5 millimetres up and to the left. Coloured fringes at every hard edge, black text carrying a magenta shadow on one side and a cyan one on the other, visible rosette pattern breaking up in the midtones. Coarse screen on newsprint, ink spread in the solids.

Replace [Subject] with what you are shooting. Everything else is deliberate: the gear, stock and lighting are what push a generator towards this look.

Works well in

Midjourney, FLUX, Stable Diffusion

Pairs with

Coarse Halftone Risograph Duotone

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