What is spot color (Pantone) printing

June 10, 2024

Spot color refers to the use of ink that has been pre adjusted or produced by a specialized ink manufacturer to print an image color, rather than using CMYK four color settings. Using spot color can make color management more accurate. When spot printing, the whiteness, glossiness, and ink absorption of the printed paper have the greatest impact on color deviation. Therefore, when mixing spot colors, it is necessary to "sample" the paper that is about to be printed on the machine and observe and verify the actual color performance, so as to reflect the printing effect more realistically.

Spot colors are often used to print a specific color. Although it is not possible to accurately display the color on a computer screen, the accurate representation of the color in printing can be seen through the color card of the standard color matching system. Generally, the spot color referred to in printing design is almost always Pantone color.

Pantone is a leading global color standards company and color authority. In 1963, Mr. Lawrence Herbe, the chairman and CEO of the company, invented the world-renowned Pantone color scheme. These color schemes have now become the global standard for color exchange in many fields, including printing, publishing, packaging, graphic art, painting, computer, film, video, textile, and fashion industries. And with its books, software, hardware, and related product services, Pantone Color has now become a world-renowned universal color standard and global color language. Pantone ink has fixed chromatography and color cards, and users can find corresponding codes for any Pantone color they need. Almost all computer design software has a Pantone color library and uses it for color definition.

From the perspective of printing effect, Pantone color printing has uniform ink color, solid texture, higher saturation and purity than four-color printing. The color effect of printing is beyond the reach of four-color printing. So when printing large areas of uniform color blocks, it is best to use Pantone ink instead of four-color printing.

Sometimes, in order to highlight or highlight color images, a special color scheme is usually added as the background or full plate color block during design. The color image part is printed in four colors, while the solid part should be printed in Pantone colors. In this way, both the color images and the actual parts can achieve good color effects, but attention should be paid to calculating the printing cost, because the printing supplier will calculate the printing cost based on 5-color printing, which will increase the cost of plate making and printing.

Author:

Mr. xinqicai

E-mail:

sales01@xqcprinting.com