The difference between CMYK color printing and spot-color printing

In printing terminology, we often hear the words four-color printing and spot-color printing, which are widely used in printed matter. But most people don't know when to choose four-color printing and when to choose spot color printing in actual production. Today, let's discuss spot color printing and CMYK color printing from concept, and difference to application.

CMYK color printing

CMYK color printing is to use CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) in four colors to overprint the desired color. In layman's terms, that is to use the different superpositions of these four colors to obtain the desired color. As long as the color has a gradient, it is all four-color overprinting. Four-color printing is superimposed by dots, and you can see different colors with a magnifying glass. outlets.

Spot color printing

Spot color printing refers to the printing process in which other color inks other than yellow, magenta, cyan, and black ink are used to reproduce the original color. In packaging printing, spot color printing is often used to print large-area background colors. Spot color printing is a single color, with no gradient, the pattern is solid, and the dots cannot be seen with a magnifying glass. (In general, spot color printing costs slightly more.)

Products for spot color printing

Some packaged products, book covers, and album covers are often composed of uniform color blocks of different colors or regular gradient color blocks and text. These color blocks and text can be overprinted with four primary color inks after color separation or can Mix the spot color ink, and then print only one spot color ink on the same color block. In the case of comprehensive consideration of improving printing quality and saving the number of overprints, spot color printing is often selected. Packaging printing often uses spot colors to print large areas of the base color.

Products for CMYK color printing

Photos taken by color photography that reflect the colorful changes in nature, color artworks by painters, or other pictures containing many different colors must be processed for technical requirements or economic considerations. The electronic color separation machine or the color desktop system scans the color separation and then adopts the four-color printing process to copy and complete.