can you explain "Spot Colors"?

[Behrmon]

Spot colors are me on taco Tuesday.

 

[neutrinocv]

We printed Pantone color charts on the material we mostly use. When a customer wants a specific color, we have them look at the chart (always under 5000K lighting) and have them choose. If they need something even more specific we propose to them a colormatching run at $100 per specific color... Most of the time they return to the Pantone chart and find one that is good enough but sometimes they do order colormatching; at least that way we get paid for the trouble for the zealous work.

 

[WhiskeyDreamer]

if it's just three colors, i'm not sure why you don't just cut vinyl for the job instead of printing it. what's the obsession with printing everything?

cut the three colors, slap 'em on the sign and call it a day.

 

[stxrmxn]

I ran a Heidelberg Speedmaster 10 colour offset press for 20 years before getting into the sticky paper business. Some spot colours require things like "2 parts rubine red" or 4 parts "Rhodamine red" mixed with several other spot inks to match a pantone swatch exactly. Tricky business. Things like a little bit of yellow ink residue left on the rollers would affect the colour dramatically.
If you do not know anything about spot colours and your customer is demanding spot colours from a cmyk printer you have to ask yourself if you really need this customer and this job.

 

[Reveal1]

I ran a Heidelberg Speedmaster 10 colour offset press for 20 years before getting into the sticky paper business. Some spot colours require things like "2 parts rubine red" or 4 parts "Rhodamine red" mixed with several other spot inks to match a pantone swatch exactly. Tricky business. Things like a little bit of yellow ink residue left on the rollers would affect the colour dramatically.
If you do not know anything about spot colours and your customer is demanding spot colours from a cmyk printer you have to ask yourself if you really need this customer and this job.

I come from the old offset world so this rings familiar. When we talk about color with customers, we try to manage expectations referring to 'pleasing' color instead of 'color matching' for example. One nice advantage of digital is the ability to quickly generate a color proof, which we do for a small charge. Seldom do we have a color issue we can't work around, and for our choosiest customers, we've generated customer specific profiles on our RIP that compensate for subtle differences in colors that are critical to maintain a brand.

 

[dypinc]

if it's just three colors, i'm not sure why you don't just cut vinyl for the job instead of printing it. what's the obsession with printing everything?

cut the three colors, slap 'em on the sign and call it a day.

I was wondering that myself a while back but when I ran the numbers, labor and stock the colored vinyl, space etc. it cost less for me to print it.

 

[unclebun]

I was wondering that myself a while back but when I ran the numbers, labor and stock the colored vinyl, space etc. it cost less for me to print it.

You don't already have white and black vinyl? There was potentially only one color to buy in this case, the medium blue. And you can buy vinyl by the yard at Fellers if you don't want any left over.

Labor is far less to handle cut vinyl compared to printing, drying, laminating, then cutting.

And then you have complied with the customer desire for "spot colors".

 

[Pewter0000]

I think the cut vinyl vs printing can also depend on the shop workflow and setup. For example, if you've got your printer running all day and slip in a job, it will be laminated with the rest the next day and it's pretty quick. We run a XR-640 and no plotter, cause we're a pretty small shop. So we'd need to tie up that to start cutting - so sometimes it's worth it just to print, depending on job size. No question that cutting vinyl is cheap and easy, though.

Speaking of printing and spot colours, I find it good practice to embed the spot colours requested in the swatches of your working file and check any sent files for special swatches. Clients sometimes send a logo and they're not aware that there are PMS colours to match, but they will be aware when they don't come back the same. VersaWorks even has a library of spot colours to convert, but I admit I don't know how accurate that library entirely is.

 

[WYLDGFI]

It's a black and white spaniel as I remember. Some of you might be to young. View attachment 151983

I think "Spots" favorite color is PMS 121.

 

[BigNate]

At least for offset printing I would never give a process color when a client requested a spot. I would offer to build the spot, and ask why the spot is needed and not a process color. However, in my slice of the world if a client knows the difference, generally there is a reason. Years ago we designed tickets for the PBR... most of the graphics were normal CMYK process. However, they were incredibly picky about the corporate colors, and would specify spot PMS colors for their logo. You cannot accurately reproduce a spot color on a CMYK machine... you can simulate a lot of spot colors on a CMYK machine, and even more on the machines that have more inks than just CMYK for processing - but any process printing of inks to build colors will have a significant amount of colors that are simply outside the color gamut of the process.... (try producing a Reflex Blue on your process device - CMYK cannot reproduce the Reflex color. If your client has a logo that has Reflex Blue, or a mix that has a high amount of Reflex, AND a customer that wants exact color matching, you will have to use a device or method that will allow for true spot color printing - either a dedicated channel in the print-head or a custom made vinyl (there are too many ways to put pigment on substrate to cover all...))