Spot Colors

 


Spot Colors

Even if you're not in the printing industry, you've probably used spot colors. For instance, they are on our walls and cars. They are surrounding us.

Spot colours are specially formulated, pre-mixed inks used in printing to achieve a specific, consistent colour. They are used as an alternative to process colours, which are created by varying the amounts of the four primary colours cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK). Spot colours are especially useful for printing solid, bright colours as well as reproducing corporate colours or other specific shades that are difficult to achieve with CMYK. They're also frequently used in the printing of spot illustrations like charts, maps, and diagrams.

Spot Color Systems

In printing, there are several different spot colour systems, each with their own set of colours. Here are a few examples:

Pantone Matching System (PMS): This is one of the most widely used spot colour systems for producing a wide range of printing colours. The Pantone system includes over 1,800 different colours, each with its own unique number, and is used by graphic designers and printers to ensure colour consistency across various printing methods and materials.

Toyo Color Finder: This system, which is similar to PMS and offers a wide range of colours, is widely used in Asia, particularly in Japan.

RAL Classic: This is a colour system that is primarily used in Europe for industrial and architectural coatings, among other things. The RAL system has 210 colours, each with its own unique number.

Graphic designers and printers use the Focoltone system (FOur COLour TONE) to create spot colours for printing. The Focoltone system comes in a variety of colours, each with its own unique number.

DIC Color Guide: This system is popular in Asia and is used in the printing and packaging industries. The DIC system includes a wide variety of colours, each with its own unique number.

Pantone

The Pantone Matching System (PMS) is one of the most widely used spot colour systems, with a large colour palette to choose from. Here are a few examples of colours available in the Pantone system:

Pantone Red 032 is a vibrant, warm red that is ideal for creating eye-catching designs.

Pantone Green 347 is a vibrant lime green that is ideal for achieving a fresh, modern look.

Pantone Blue 286 is a deep, rich blue that is ideal for conveying elegance and sophistication.

Pantone Yellow 123: This is a bright, cheerful yellow that is ideal for conveying a cheerful and optimistic vibe.

Pantone Black: A rich, deep black that is ideal for conveying mystery and elegance.

Pantone Silver-10077-C: This is a metallic silver that is ideal for exuding elegance and luxury.

Pantone Gold 16-0836 TPX : This is a metallic gold that is ideal for conveying wealth and prestige.

These are just a few of the colours available through the Pantone Matching System. The Pantone system has over 1,800 colours to choose from, and it is widely used by graphic designers and printers to ensure colour consistency across different printing methods and materials.

By not having to refer to CMYK percentages then it is possible for the designer and the printer to achieve and exact match by referring to the pantone color charts.

An Important Update on using Pantone colors in Creative Cloud Products 

Adobe's Creative Cloud applications, including Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, no longer support free Pantone colors. Customers must now pay a monthly ($15) or annual ($90) subscription fee via the Adobe Pantone Connect plugin in order to gain access to the entire collection of Pantone color books. This modification resulted from Pantone's decision to alter its business model and require direct payment from customers. Some Photoshop users have reported that older files containing Pantone colors are now black. However, workarounds such as disabling updates and copying metadata values are available.

See the full story.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

History of PDF

A Short History of PDF Adobe Systems made the PDF specification available free of charge in 1993. In the early years PDF was popular mainly in desktop publishing workflows and the first PDF Export was created for PageMaker 5 by Mapsoft . PDF competed with a variety of formats such as DjVu, Envoy, Common Ground Digital Paper, Farallon Replica and even Adobe's own PostScript format. Released as an ISO standard PDF was a proprietary format controlled by Adobe until it was released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 32000-1:2008,[5][6] at which time control of the specification passed to an ISO Committee of volunteer industry experts. In 2008, Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting royalty-free rights for all patents owned by Adobe that are necessary to make, use, sell, and distribute PDF-compliant implementations.[7] PDF 1.7, the sixth edition of the PDF specification and the version
Read more

Illustrator Scripts for changing colors

Image
  Illustrator Scripts for changing colors These are two scripts that are almost identical but one uses RGB colours and the other CMYK. For these to work correctly the Illustrator document needs to be put into the correct color mode (RGB or CMYK) from the File menu/Document Color Mode. The parts of the scripts that you would need to change are at the top of the scripts. So for example in the CMYK variant of the script you would need to change one or more of the four values for the original color (the color that you are searching for) and the new color that you are replacing it with. Be aware that this code is searching for paths and not images or text. For it to work with text it should have been converted to outlines before the code is run. The code could be enhanced to add this additional functionality. It would also be possible to add a CEP (HTML and JavaScript) user interface so that users could change the colors that way rather than directly in the script. You will also see two fla
Read more

Considerations for PDF Creation

Image
There are several things to consider when creating PDF files from various sources to ensure that the final product is of high quality and suitable for its intended use. To begin, consider the source of the content that will be included in the PDF. If the content is scanned from a physical document, make sure the scanner is of high quality and that the document is properly aligned and lit before scanning. If the content is created electronically, it is critical to ensure that the layout and formatting are consistent, and that any images or graphics included are of high resolution especially if the pdf is going to be printed. Following that, it is critical to consider the PDF's intended use. If the PDF will be printed, it is critical that it is properly formatted for print and that any images or graphics included are of high resolution (see the adobe help system on print production tools ). If the PDF will be primarily used for screen viewing, it is critical that the document is prop
Read more