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In printing terminology, we often hear the terms "four-color printing" and "spot color printing". They are widely used in brochures, books, flyers and other paper-based and similar printed materials. However, most people are not clear about when to choose four-color printing and when to choose spot color printing in actual production. Today, together with you, we will explore spot color printing and four-color printing from the concepts, differences to applications. Let's learn together!
Four-color printing
Four-color printing is the process of achieving the colors you need by using four colors: CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black). In simpler terms, it involves combining these four colors in different ways to create the desired color. Any color with a gradient effect is achieved through four-color printing. Four-color printing is done by superimposing dots, and with a magnifying glass, you can see the individual dots of different colors.
2. Spot Color Printing
Spot color printing refers to a printing process that uses additional color inks besides the four primary colors (yellow, magenta, cyan, and black) to reproduce the colors of the original document. In packaging printing, the spot color printing process is often used to print large areas of base colors. Spot color printing is a single color with no gradation. The patterns are solid and cannot be seen as dots under a magnifying glass. (Generally speaking, the cost of spot color printing is slightly higher.)
3. Which products must be printed using the four-color printing process?
The photos that capture the rich and diverse color changes in nature through color photography, the colorful artworks of painters, or other images containing numerous different colors, due to technical requirements or economic considerations, must be scanned and separated into four colors using an electronic color separation machine or a color desktop system, and then reproduced using the four-color printing process.
4. What kinds of products would use spot color printing?
Some packaged products or the covers of books, magazines and picture albums are usually composed of uniform color blocks of different colors or regular gradient color blocks along with text. These color blocks and text can be printed using four-color ink sets after being separated into colors, or special color inks can be mixed, and then only a certain type of special color ink is printed at the same color block. Considering the improvement of printing quality and saving the number of color separation processes, special color printing is often chosen. In packaging printing, special color printing is frequently used to print large areas of base colors.
5. How do spot color printing and four-color overprinting differ in terms of visual effect?
The color of spot color printing has a lower brightness and a higher saturation; the uniform spot color blocks are usually printed in solid form. The ink volume should be appropriately increased. When the ink layer thickness on the printing surface is large, the sensitivity of the ink layer thickness change to the color variation will decrease, thus making it easier to achieve a uniform and thick printing effect with uniform ink color.
The color blocks printed by the four-color printing process are prone to color intensity changes due to variations in ink layer thickness and changes in printing process conditions. The variation in the extent of dot enlargement leads to color alterations. Therefore, the color blocks printed by the four-color printing process are not likely to achieve uniform ink color.
From the perspective of economic benefits, the key factor is whether the use of spot color printing technology can reduce the number of color separations. Because reducing the number of color separations not only saves printing costs but also saves the expenses for pre-press production.
If a product's image contains both colored layers and a large area of solid color, the colored layer part can be printed in four colors, while the large area of solid color can be printed using spot colors.
Spot color ink
It refers to a pre-mixed specific color ink, such as fluorescent yellow, pearl blue, metallic gold and silver ink, etc. It is not produced through the four-color printing of CMYK. The process of color registration means achieving accurate colors.
It has the following three features:
Accuracy
Each color separation has its own fixed hue, which ensures the accuracy of colors in the printing process, thereby largely solving the problem of color transmission accuracy.
Practicality
Spot colors are generally defined for color by using solid colors, regardless of how light the color is. Of course, a screen (Tint) can also be added to the spot color to achieve any shade of the spot color.
Wide color gamut performance
The color gamut in the color library is very wide, exceeding the color gamut of RGB and even that of the CMYK color space. Therefore, a large portion of colors cannot be reproduced using the CMYK four-color printing inks.
