Spot Color Printing

Process Description

Spot color printing refers to a printing process that uses inks other than the four primary inks (yellow, magenta, cyan, and black) to reproduce the colors of the original. In packaging printing, spot color printing is often used to print large-area background colors. Spot color printing uses a single color without gradients; the patterns are solid, and no dots can be seen under a magnifying glass. Moreover, since spot color is a single color, it eliminates the need for mixing and overlaying the four colors, thus making it less likely to cause print-through when printing large-area dark color blocks.

When to use spot color printing?①. Monochromatic or two-color books: With only 1-2 colors, monochromatic/two-color printing machines can be used to reduce printing costs.②. For better effects of large-area color blocks: Four-color printing uses dot superposition. If large-area color blocks are printed with spot colors, the colors will be more standard and the solid background effect will be better.③. For high color requirements: Such as corporate standard colors, designers will specify Pantone spot color values. Color deviations are inevitable in printed materials of different batches when using four-color inks, while Pantone color values are universally recognized and Pantone inks are professionally formulated by manufacturers, which can minimize color deviations to the greatest extent.④. When special spot color inks are needed: Spot gold, spot silver, fluorescent inks, etc., which cannot be mixed with CMYK four-color inks, require spot color printing.