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When printing material that will include photos it is best to use Lc and Lm (Light Cyan and Light Magenta) to aid in the quality of the print. The description from Wiki says:

CcMmYK, sometimes referred to as CMYKLcLm or CMYKcm, is a six color printing process used in some inkjet printers optimized for photo printing. It extends the customary four color CMYK process, which stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black), by adding light cyan (lower case c) and light magenta (lower case m). The light cyan and light magenta inks are essentially a washed out version of the cyan and magenta inks.

and it indicates the advatanges are:

The most noticeable result of using light cyan and light magenta inks is the removal of a distinct and harsh halftoning dot appearance that appears in prints that use light shades of cyan or magenta on the pure CMYK ink configuration. Usually when printing a dark color the printer will saturate the area with colored ink dots, but will use fewer ink dots to create the effect of a light color. The result is hard to notice with Yellow because the human retina is not as sensitive to yellow as other colors. However, the individual cyan and magenta ink dots will stand out in a sparse pattern due to their darker color against a white background; the result is undesirable when it is noticed.

but my questions are:

  • How can one use this advantage when designing in Illustrator or InDesign?
  • Can a document's setup be extended to include Lc and Lm?
  • Can you calibrate your settings for Lc and Lm?
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  • 6 color printing is typically designed to enhance photographs more than anything.
    – DA01
    Apr 14, 2015 at 14:35

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As I know there is no software that natively supports hexa-color space (e.g. CMYKOG by Pantone or one you mentioned). You can take this advantage manually via multichannel mode in Photoshop. But it is really tricky and requires constant color separation and tests.

As for desktop printers which use 6 colors. This printers have own color separation and RIP algorithms optimized specifically for recommended inks and I am not sure that you can affect them.

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    PS: in come cases sending RGB image to such printers produce much better and accurate colors than do conversion to CMYK in Photoshop and print then. I think this is exactly due qualified algorithms optimized for specific hardware instead some generic conversion in PS.
    – Vnovak
    Jun 27, 2014 at 14:46

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