Patent ID: 6970175

Claim:
A method of applying color to an object in a native artwork production environment, the method comprising the steps of: providing a list of colors, including at least one color selected from the group consisting of pure process colors, spot colors and dirty colors, the list of colors being provided within the native artwork production environment; with a user action, modifying a color mixture associated with the object by applying the at least one color to the object in order to produce at least one modified object within the native artwork production environment; extracting the color mixture of the at least one modified object within the native artwork production environment to produce an extracted color mixture; and displaying the extracted color mixture within the native artwork production environment, wherein the providing, modifying, extracting and displaying steps are repeated for each of a plurality of objects in a piece of digital artwork within the native artwork production environment, the method further comprising the steps of merging the extracted color mixture for each of the plurality of objects to produce merged color information; tracking a number of dirty colors in the merged color information; and displaying the merged color information.