A device, essentially a high-end drum scanner, used to produce color separations comprising a fixed scanning head which picks up light impulses emanating from within a rotating drum (or elsewhere), on the surface of which is mounted the image to be color separated. The light signals emanating from the original are "read" by the scanning head, separated into primary colors—cyan, magenta, yellow, and black—and then written to photographic negatives. Color printing requires a separate negative for each of these colors. The scanning software also has the capability of adjusting the contrast, saturation, brightness, and gray balance, increasing the sharpness of the image, or performing automatic color correction. Depending on the device, the separations can be output to a page makeup system, as halftone positives, halftone negatives, etc. (See Scanning.)
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