Dictionary of Marketing Terms: continuous tone
continuous tone
image, such as a photograph or painting, comprising all variations of color or shade from black to white and produced by varying concentrations of pigment. For example, watercolor paint can be applied thickly to produce a dark shade or thinly to produce a light shade. line copy however, utilizes the same density of pigment, or ink, throughout the image. Because printers cannot reproduce a continuous tone image, a halftone image must be created from the continuous tone image for printing.
