Many customers don’t know the difference of CMYK four color printing, spot color and Pantone color.
Here is the detailed explanation.
1. What is the CMYK?
CMYK – four colors: cyan, magenta (magenta), yellow, and black, which can be used to reproduce thousands of other colors in printing.
For example, usually we use cyan and yellow mixed colors to get green. If you want dark green, cyan color ink will be used more than yellow ink, and if you want light green, yellow color ink materials will be used more material than cyan ink.
In gravure printing, some times we use white color after all the other color printed. The white color help the whole printings for vivid and bright looking.
Especially, when we make printings for mylar bags, the colorful printings may get matte after laminated with Aluminum foil and VMPET materials.
2. What is spot color?
Spot color refers to a premixed specific color ink used to replace or supplement of the CMYK inks, such as bright orange, green, fluorescent, metallic gold silver inks, etc., or can be a bronzing plate, embossed plate, etc. It can also be used as a local varnish plate, etc. It is not produced by mixing CMYK four colors, Each type of spot color requires a dedicated printing plate (which can be simply understood as a pair of spot color films and a separate printing plate for spot colors during printing), and spot colors mean accurate colors.
3. How to identify the CMYK printing and Spot printing?
First of all, after the spot color is printed, it can be seen through a dot lens that there are no dots (even if the color is not 100% and dots appear, but as long as it is not a color in CMYK, it is also a spot color dot). Although it appears to be multicolored on the outside, it is actually a combination of several types of ink used in printing, which is called spot color. If you see dots, it may be a single color (one of CMYK) or multi color, then it is one of the CMYK four color.
Secondly, for some physical images or photos, or for some complicated patterns we will CMYK four colors to multiple different colors at some special ratio to make the designs printed vividly and clearly.
4. What is the Pantone Color
Pantone color is an international standard color card. Spot colors refer to special colors except for the CMYK four colors.
Pantone color is a general term, and spot color is a series of Pantone colors
