Areas of colour and coloured type are either printed as Spot Colours or colours made out of CMYK.

Spot colours are mixed like paint to an exact match and printed onto the sheet using their own litho plate The Pantone system contains hundreds of these colours with their own reference number system. All these colours can also be produced out of 4 process colours by converting them to CMYK, but you do not get an exact match. Some colours match better than others, the Pantone "Process Colour Selector" book shows colours printed by both systems side by side and will enable you to judge when to use a Spot colour and when a CMYK produced colour will be acceptable.

The four process colours

CYAN

MAGENTA

YELLOW

BLACK

Whenever you create a new colour in Quark, Illustrator or Freehand etc, remember to designate it to print as a spot colour or as a process colour. In Quark click in the box next to 'Spot Colour' in the Edit Colours dialog to make the colour print as a spot - deselect the box to make the colour print out of CMYK. In Illustrator use the Swatch Options dialog to specify process or spot when you create a colour. (Please refer to the illustrations below.)

Reflex Blue set to print as a SPOT COLOUR

Reflex Blue set to print as a FOUR PROCESS COLOURS

A blue mixed from percentages of the FOUR PROCESS COLOURS

If you are printing with a spot colour use a Pantone colour reference rather than mixing various amounts of CMYK in your program to create a colour that you like. If the only reference for this colour is your colour laser print we will not be able to match the colour easily on a printing press due to the different systems being used, we will however be able to match toa Pantone colour reference and know what the colour should look like.