Spot Colours, CMYK & RGB
At Mount Street Printers we print in Spot Colours (Pantone Colours) and CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), but never RGB (Red, Green, Blue).
Therefore when providing artwork, the colour needs to be set as either Spot Colours or CMYK and not RGB.
RGB artwork can be converted to CMYK however it could affect your final print colours negatively.
Spot Colours
Colours created without screens or dots, such as those found in the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM®, are referred to in the industry as spot or solid colours. From a palette of 18 basic colours, each of the spot colours in the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM is mixed according to its own unique ink mixing formula developed by Pantone. Where you would mix yellow and blue to make green, PANTONE spot colour is similar in concept - but with precise recipes to achieve a particular colour of choice.
The precision begins with the printing ink manufacturers who are licensed by Pantone to manufacture inks for mixing PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM Colours. Printers can then order the colours by number or mix it themselves according to the ink mixing formula in a PANTONE® FORMULA GUIDE.
The PANTONE® FORMULA GUIDE with 1,867 PANTONE PLUS Colors on coated and uncoated stock.
Each colour in the System has a unique name or number followed by either a C or U. The letter suffix refers to the paper stock on which it is printed: C for Coated paper and U for Uncoated paper. Also created without screens, PANTONE metallic and pastel colours are considered part of the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM.
Due to the gamut of the 18 basic colors, some spot colors will be cleaner and brighter than if they were created in the four-color process described below. Spot colors are commonly used in corporate logos and identity programs, and in one, two or three-color jobs.
CMYK (also known as Process Colours)
The most common method of achieving colour in printing is referred to as CMYK, four–colour process, 4/c process or even just process. To reproduce a color image, a file is separated into four different colours: Cyan (C), Magenta (M), Yellow (Y) and Black (K).
A colour image is separated into CMYK. When printed on paper, the original image is recreated.
During separation, screen tints comprised of small dots are applied at different angles to each of the four colors. The screened separations are then transferred to four different printing plates, one for each color, and run on a printing press with one color overprinting the next. The composite image fools the naked eye with the illusion of continuous tone.
PANTONE 4–COLOUR PROCESS guide set. Displays 3,010 CMYK combinations with screen tint percentages. A guide on uncoated paper is included in the set.
Process colours are represented as percentages of cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Varying the percentages offers thousands of colour possibilities. When four-colour process printing is used to reproduce photographs, decorative elements such as borders and graphics can be created out of process colours. This helps to avoid the added expense of an extra plate needed to print each spot colour.
Converting Spot Colours to Process Colours (also known as CMYK)
Sometimes, a spot PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM Colour is requested when creating a process-printed piece. To save money, the spot colour should be evaluated to see how it will look if printed in CMYK. While some colours can be simulated well, there are many that are outside the possible colour gamut for that process and will look quite different. As the quality of the resulting colour conversion is very subjective, the designer can make decisions using the PANTONE COLOUR BRIDGE® guide, as well as a PANTONE EXTENDED GAMUT Coated Guide.
