CL2- COLOR LABELS

The Differences Between CMYK & Spot color.

In Short for Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black, it is pronounced as CMYK.

CMYK is a color model in which all colors are described as a mixture to produce an infinite variety of colors. Because of these four basic colors, it is often called Four-color or Full process color printing.  These are commonly used on magazines, posters, packaging printed using just the 4 CMYK inks.

Unlike Spot color, spot inks can be used for colours that cannot be created with CMYK, and also when only a single colour is required. In this case, each spot color is represented by its own ink, which is specially mixed. Spot colors are effective for highlighting text but they cannot be used to reproduce into full-color images.

For instance a document may be created using, say, two inks, black and Pantone 280 (a blue), rather than using the 4 CMYK inks to create only a single black and blue.

It's highly recommended that a colour swatch book, such as a Pantone Color International Guide, or any of the CMYK process guides are used. These guides are ideal for choosing colours (eg, corporate logo color), far more reliable then choosing 'off screen'. The colour on screen may look different to the printed guide due to each screen color calibration.