What are Spot Colors?
Saturday 12 May 2007With the costs of process color work on the decline (or maybe it’s just that fewer designers these days know the ins and outs of spot work), spot color seems to be more and more of a mystery to the average print designer.So what is the difference between spot and process color?
Process color, (or CMYK, or full color, or four-color, or photographic color - depending on your background and who you’re talking to) uses four ink colors to create full color spectrum. The inks used in this process are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (Key). These inks are semi-transparent when applied to the paper on a printing press and are combined in various densities to closely reproduce photographic (or natural) color.
I say “closely reproduce” because due to the color combinations available as well as the press operator’s eye for color (and the fact that the CMYK color spectrum is considerably smaller than gamut of color the human eye can interepret), it’s not always possible to get the exact color reproduction as you may see on your monitor, or from your inkjet printer.Spot color, on the other hand, includes only the color inks specified in your print document. For this method of print to work correctly, you must first specifiy your colors correctly in your document. This is most commonly done by specifying Pantone colors as “spots” in InDesign or Quark (and can be done in Illustrator and other applications as well).
Why print Spot instead of CMYK?Many businesses have certain spot colors assigned in their logos (for example, Mercer University’s branding colors are Pantone 158 and Black) to ensure that they are printed with consistency from printer to printer, project to project.Costs is a factor as well. It doesn’t make too much sense to pay for color when printing a letterhead… Only the two colors used in the branding piece are going to be used, no photography, etc. With these types of projects, it’s generally cheaper to print using the two spot colors instead of the more complicated four-color process (and color printing sometimes cannot reproduce Pantone colors).
The process of spot differs a little from full color printing as well. With spot printing, pre-pigmented opaque inks are used to print. So if your business’ branding piece used Pantone 300 (a light blue) and Pantone 032 (a bright orange), these color inks would be used on the printing press instead of the being built using the translucent CMYK inks.
So to recap, when to use spot vs. CMYK printing?
CMYK:When full color is preferred.
Spot:When creating a piece that uses only a company’s branding colors.
Cost.
