Standard Pantone® colour swatch as seen in Adobe Illustrator.
You'll notice that many Pantone colours have names instead of numbers. These are usually the most popular colours and are easier to remember by name rather than number.
e.g. Reflex Blue, Warm Red, Process Blue/Yellow/Cyan/Green etc.
Spot colours are the preferred method of producing stationery inexpensively. This is also the method used where colour accuracy is also deemed essential. The standard reference guide to spot colour work in the UK is Pantone®.
Basically, an ink colour is ready-mixed to produce a particular colour, as in Pantone® 032 below.
Pantone 032 displayed at 100%
So if you were producing a 2 colour card with, for instance, Black as the main colour for text, then a 2nd Pantone® colour would be chosen from a colour swatch.
To produce this job would entail making 2 sheets of film which would then be used to make 2 printing plates for the press.
The more spot colours used, the more film and plates are needed, hence the increased costs.
To keep costs down it's possible to create tints of a spot colour without needing extra film or plates. The example (shown on the left) consists of Pantone® 032 at: 100% + 50% + 25%. These 3 'shades' would all be on 1 piece of film & 1 plate.
So, just for example, say we have a 2 colour leaflet to produce. Using the 2 colours plus variations in tint strength we can still end up with a very colourful job, without having to go the 4 colour route, which could prove to be too expensive.
Process Colours (4 colour process, or CMYK)
Process colours are normally used where continuous tones (as in photographs) are required. The primary colours Cyan, Magenta & Yellow are mixed with Black to produce the full range of colours.
For instance, if we needed to produce the Pantone® 032 colour above using a 4 colour process, the 'split' would be:
Cyan = 0%
Magenta = 90%
Yellow = 86%
Black = 0%.
As a separate piece of film and plate is produced for each of the 4 colours this adds heavily to the cost compared to printing in spot colours.
Some spot colours lend themselves perfectly to being reproduced using the 4 colour process, whereas others can cause slight problems in that the match is not perfect.
This is a very general outline of the 2 processes - there is quite a bit more involved with the various methods.
A more in-depth article relating to colour issues can be found<< HERE >>
Problems producing stationery using both spot & process colours
Let's say your company design uses 2 colours: Pantone 021 (Orange) and Black.
The 2 colours would be set up on the press and if the orange (021) was later compared to a Pantone swatch then you would see that the match is very, very close. So far, so good.
Business Cards
You've decided, for whatever reason, to use a solid colour on the front or reverse of the card and you also want this matt-laminated. Due to cost, most commercial printers (ourselves included) would produce these cards using a 4 colour process (CMYK). The reason for this is that it is too expensive to set up a printing press with 2 spot colours and then laminate these cards.
It is far more cost-effective to 'plan' multiple cards together, run on one large sheet, and then laminate the whole lot as one group. As all the cards will probably have different colours the way around this is to produce them from the 4 CMYK colours, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.
However, the downside to this is that when certain spot colours are converted to CMYK there can be a distinct colour difference. I won't go into the technical reasons for what causes this, but it definitely can cause problems.
What this means is that the colour of your cards can end up being totally different from the colours on your letterheads. Note: this is not all colours, but just some that seem to cause this issue.
Workaround?
One workaround is to print the cards first, and then 'match' the letterheads to this colour. (Spot colours can easily be 'adjusted'). The problem then is that you end up with matching stationery, but all of a sudden it's not Pantone Orange (021) anymore, as we've matched to a CMYK colour.
If your shade of colour is critical then, unless you've had previous cards that are acceptable, it's probably best to steer away from cards produced using CMYK. However, not to alarm you overly, this problem only applies to certain spot colours.
We have a list of certain colours that cause problems and we would notify you during the artwork process if this was applicable.
To recap: if you want your card matt-laminated and also for the card to match existing stationery, then it would definitely be worth checking with us first to see if there may be any colour-matching issues.
If you are at all concerned about achieving colour consistency across all your printed products, whether stationery or promotional items please see a fuller explanation of the above issues, posted < HERE >
If you're wondering how to access the colour swatches in Illustrator, well the guys at Adobe have moved it to a different part of the menu system. Just click on: Window (in the main file menu), select: Swatch Libraries and then Colour Books.
For our purposes, it doesn't really matter whether you select uncoated or coated, as the material and the print process will determine which type of ink is used for your project. For instance, if you're having some leaflets printed on gloss art paper, then the printer will use a coated ink, which has been designed to dry quickly on this type of surface.
Business cards, letterheads etc. will generally be printed using uncoated inks. I would recommend not worrying too much about this aspect, and choose a 'regular' colour book such as Pantone Solid Coated and stick with it for all your tasks.
The important thing to remember is to stick with one colour book on a project, i.e. don't mix coated and uncoated or any other book in a single project.
If you're not using spot colours in your project, but have used them to select the colours you require, don't forget to convert them all to CMYK. This is easily done by selecting them one at a time, (and then using 'Select' > 'Same' > 'Fill Colour' to select all similar colours) and then converting using the 4 colour icon shown below. If you don't see this box, then hit F6 to display it.
Any spot colours left behind probably won't print, so do make sure you've converted them all, including any 'strokes' that are in spot colours.
After conversion you can see that Pantone 247 is made up of 36% Cyan and 100% Magenta, with no yellow or black (K).
How do I convert a CMYK colour I've been given, back to its Spot Colour equivalent?
This is a question often asked!
There are a couple of options, an expensive one and another that just takes a little time.
The first option is to purchase a Pantone swatch that shows the spot colour equivalents of CMYK splits. That's the easy way, but for occasional use a little too expensive.
Another way is this:
Firstly, write down the CMYK colour split you're looking to find a spot colour equivalent for. For the purposes of this exercise, I've chosen the following split:
C = 51%, M = 0%, Y = 9% K = 0%
Now, draw a box in your illustration program and fill it with the above split.
Draw another box below your original and choose a colour as close as you can from the Pantone swatch of your choice. (I normally use Pantone Solid Coated). In this instance I went for Pantone 311.
With so many blues to choose from you'll be lucky if you get really close the first time.
OK, you've chosen a blue and now need to convert this to CMYK in the usual way, using the 4 colour icon.
Pantone 311 has split to 63, 0, 12 & 0. Not bad, but a little on the dark side, (scary!), so we need to try another colour.
I've now selected Pantone 305 which looks pretty good, so again we need to convert it to CMYK. Fingers crossed.
Spot on. Our 51, 0, 9, 0 split converts perfectly to Pantone 305 so we now have our working spot colour.
However, if any points need clarification or you just need a little help please don't hesitate to contact me, and I'll do my best to assist.
Paul
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If you've enjoyed reading the above article, or it's been helpful to you I'd really appreciate a link back to it from your blog or website, as every little link helps!
Here are some details to help make the job easier for you . . .
Title = Spot & Process Colours Explained
Description = An easy-to-follow article that explains the main differences between spot and process colours, plus the advantages/disadvantages when using either.
If you don't want to link to the above article but still found it helpful it would be greatly appreciated if you could leave a comment in the box below. Please let me know if you found the article easy to follow, or if you thought it was lacking in information as this will help me with ones I have planned for the future.
If you are happy with your understanding of spot vs. process colours and wondered how spot colours are handled in Photoshop then see Preseving Spot Colours in Photoshop to read how this is done.
How to create Rich Black in your artwork,
and the reasons for doing it.
Many designers, new to working with print, make the easy-to-do mistake of using 100% black only in their 4 colour artwork. This often gives poor results, especially on absorbant materials such as letterheads, invoices etc.
An excellent article can be found here that explains the whole process of choosing the colour, right through to the ink being mixed and used on the press:
Spot and Process colours explained for the layman.
No need to be baffled when dealing with spot or process colour.
Colour Consistency
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Colour Issues
A more in-depth look at some of the issues surrounding working with colour in print.
Further reading: if you are happy with your understanding of spot vs. process colours and wondered how spot colours are handled in Photoshop then have a look at this article explaining how it's done: Preserving Spot Colours in Photoshop
I don't have access to a Pantone® swatch.
How do I get you to print the colour I want?
Probably the easiest way, if time permits, is to pick a colour in whatever software package you may be using, draw some coloured blocks and print these out. In your print properties window, I would suggest using Normal or Best, rather than Draft.
Send us the sheet marking the colour you wish to have reproduced. We can then normally get a very close match to this.
Tip
Do not ever rely on colours that are viewed onscreen, unless you have a colour-calibrated system. Your monitor uses a completely different system for displaying colours (RGB) to what is used in the print business.
Recommended Partner: www.colorguides.net Online store featuring Pantone color guides, books, and software.
Please mention us!
Worried about colour issues across your stationery?
New section < HERE > covering workarounds and more . . .
CMYK - why does
K = Black?
It was thought that CMYB would be too confusing, as many people would read B as Blue, hence the use of K which stands for 'key'.
Tints of black, or grey?
We often get artwork sent in for a spot colour job where instead of selecting a suitable grey ink, a tint of black has been used for all the text.
Grey text can look quite classy on a business card, letterhead etc. However, it must be noted that using a tint of black effectively removes dots from the artwork to achieve the grey look. In some instances, this dot-removal effect can be seen with the naked eye, and also has the downside of making the text look less than sharp.
Small text, as on a business card, can suffer if the tint is too light, say 20 or 30%.
The way around this issue is to choose one of the standard greys in the Pantone® colour swatch, (found around the no. 450 mark in your swatch).
All Pantone® inks are specially mixed to produce accurate colours which means if you select one of the greys, this will be printed down with 100% dot coverage, in other words, there is no dot-removal so the image/text will be perfectly sharp.
The above only applies to spot colour work, and does not apply to CMYK printing.
If a tint of black must be used, then I'd recommend not going below 50% for text.
Telephone: 01635 255 552
