What’s the difference between spot color (Pantone inks) and
full color (CMYK) printing?
Both terms apply to print jobs that are being run at commercial print shops.
Spot color is produced with Pantone (PMS) inks and is typically used by
a print shop when you are printing a piece with just a few colors, such
as stationery items. Full color printing uses four or more colors to reproduce
full color images or photographs. A designer will ask about your budget
before designing to help you pick which color space (spot color or CMYK)
to design in before beginning a design project.
- Printing two or three PMS inks at a time is typically cheaper than printing
with "full color" CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) inks.
- CMYK inks produce a full color spectrum by using tiny dots in various
combinations to "trick" your eyes into seeing different colors.
- PMS inks can be reproduced print shop to print shop, time and again
with the best accuracy. All professional commercial print shops have the
Pantone PMS swatch book and should be able to reproduce the PMS color(s)
you selected, no matter where you take your job to be printed.
- PMS inks are printed as a solid (unless you have a screened element
like a gradient or photo), not like CMYK with dots. So PMS inks are more
vivid.
- Note about CMYK jobs and proofs — even if you print your job in
CMYK inks with a commercial printer, they use wet CMYK inks, not CMYK
toner or ink jet inks, so the results are not the same as a color proof
from an office printer. Digital printers are an exception as they use
toner, but even they often produce different results than your ink jet
due to differences in paper and printing method.
- Press checks can help avoid surprises.