OFUN Printing Brings You Pre-Printing Tips.Our dedicated page offers you a fresh printing experience, sharing essential pre-press tips and comprehensive advice on packaging materials and their unique characteristics. We provide innovative concepts in design and material printing knowledge.
Print Color (CMYK)
Process colors are produced by combining four standard printing inks: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK). They are used when a design requires multiple colors, making individual spot colors too expensive or impractical (e.g., printing color photographs).
When specifying process colors, keep these principles in mind:
- For high-quality prints, use the CMYK values from a commercial printer’s process color reference chart.
- The final output of process colors is determined by their CMYK values. If you define colors in RGB (or LAB in InDesign), they will be converted to CMYK during separation, which varies based on color management settings and document profiles.
- Never rely solely on on-screen colors for print specifications unless you have a properly calibrated color management system and understand its limitations.
- Avoid using only process colors for digital viewing, as CMYK has a smaller color gamut than most screens.
- In Illustrator and InDesign, process colors can be defined as global or non-global. In Illustrator, global process colors remain linked to swatches, so editing a swatch updates all objects using it. By default, process colors are non-global. In InDesign, swatches applied to objects are automatically global, while non-global swatches are unnamed and editable in the Color panel.
Spot Color
Spot colors are pre-mixed specialty inks used alongside or instead of CMYK, requiring their own printing plate. They are ideal for designs with limited colors that demand precise accuracy, especially when reproducing hues outside the CMYK gamut. However, the final output depends on the printer’s ink mixing and paper stock, not your digital color values or color management.
When specifying spot colors, remember:
- For best results, choose spot colors from a color-matching system supported by your commercial printer. Design software includes several industry-standard color libraries.
- Minimize the number of spot colors—each one adds a separate plate, increasing printing costs. If you need more than four colors, consider using process colors instead.
- If a spot-color object overlaps a transparent element, unexpected results may occur when exporting to EPS, converting spot colors to CMYK, or separating in non-Adobe applications. Use Flattener Preview or Separations Preview to check transparency effects before printing. In InDesign, the Ink Manager can convert spot colors to process colors before export.
- A spot-color plate can also apply a varnish over CMYK prints, resulting in a five-ink output (four process colors + one spot varnish).
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