Spot & Process
pechos (120 pencils) | Mon, 2005-08-08 21:22Hi,
Recently I have been trying to better wrap my head around the color printing process. I have usually designed for print in the past using CMYK process colors. Lately though I have been gaining a better understand the difference between Spot and Process and like the idea of the consistency which can be achieved via Spot.
So here is my question/confusion:
If I choose to create a 2 color spot logo lets say using "blue" and "yellow".
Am I able to use different hues, saturations, hints, midtones and shades of that spot color? What variations can I get away with and not incur the fee for an additional spot in the print process? Am I limited to the PMS value with absoloutly no alterations?
I realize some of my terminology might be off, but hopefully someone gets the Jist of where I am going with this. Any feedback is always much appreciated, hopefully I am making sense to someone.
Thanks.
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you only be able to use these colors as they are, halftones of these colors or their mixtures.
For example, you´ll be able to use from 100% to 1% (notice that 0% is paper color...) of chosen color #1, from 100% to 1% of chosen color #2, and their mixtures.
But I do not recommend to use mixtures in two spot colors works unless you know about "ángulos de trama" (sorry but I don´t know how does it mean in English, It`s Spanish). If they are not accurate, most probably restult is moiret...
I hope help you a little bit...
Ok, I know... It's only R'n'R ...but I like it.
If you use spot color you can use them as different percentages of that specific color. Mostly for logos they are printed 100%. Even if there are two blues. A lighter and a darker you would use separate two spot colors for the two blues to achieve best quality. If you want to save money (very little) you may want to try to print these two blue with just one spot color. 100% and a 40% for example. But this will only work if the two blues are of the same hue of course.
Mixing two spot colors can be done, but hard to know or predict for sure what will the resulting color will be. As MACarra mentioned the angles are very important. When doing separation the best way to mix up to 4 spot colors is to actually make the films as they were CMYK, so for example dark blue would be C, light blue would be M and so on. You make the artwork in CMYK and separate it normally and you just simply tell the printer to print the C plate with your specific spot color.
For spot colors you can use any color, no need to rely on Pantone only. Most printers would accept a sample color chip to match the printing color to it. So theoretically you can come up to them with a green apple and tell them to match the green on the business card to it. But of course this never happens, because the apple doesn't have a consistent green color. You should also be careful with printing when you are fine tuning a color at the printing house, because the freshly printed paint looks bright and shiny, but once it dries it changes color significantly. Even hue of colors can change slightly. Therefore it's best to rely on Pantone, where the printer can just use a recipe to mix your color from the basic inks.
You can try to experiment mixing silver with spot colors or using thin paint. Many cool things can be achieved if your printer is willing to spend time and money with you.