First off...don't believe everything your sales rep tells you. We were told that Roland NEVER takes a machine back once it's been delivered to a customer, and that Refurbished units only come from trade show demos and vinyl manufacturers after borrowing it for profiling. Turns out, our machine was sitting in another print shop and got returned and ended up at Roland's refurb department where they swapped out the mainboard and put it back for sale as a refurb. So don't believe everything your sales rep tells you...
Do you realize that if you print 100% cyan, and go put it against the chart it'll match the 100% cyan swatch? You can't just "throw more ink" on vinyl to get brighter colors. 100% cyan is 100% cyan. How could you possibly get 120% cyan?
Sure you can take a pantone swatch over to the spot color library and find one that matches and run that spot color instead, but the spot color library has been around forever - so I highly doubt "that's why it exists."
It exists so that you can run a spot color and know it's going to print the same every single time. It also exists, so that you can print spot color library and send it to your customers or designers and they can use spot color chart without having to be in your office at the time you're printing to verify colors. If they call out the spot color, they know it'll look just like it does on that handy chart.
Or picture this...customer brings you a printed piece of business card or their company van that was printed by shop XYZ and they can't get the files from them. So you pull out your spot color chart, and voila, a color on the chart matches the color already printed -- now you can run the spot color and you know it'll match without guessing.
I am fully aware of why standardized color swatches exist in general. I didn't see that as necessary to explain. As for sending customers swatches so they can visually choose a color and you can maintain that color throughout all their jobs - you could do that with a simple CMYK printed swatch chart so it's not really worth mentioning in this context. The Roland spots exist so they can do that and more. I used "matching to a Pantone" as an example of how they are used to match to existing chosen colors and brighter spots. Referencing Pantone seemed like the most obvious and common connection to make. I'm sorry I did not elaborate that it could also apply to paint swatches, previously printed materials etc... I figured that could be extrapolated.
The fact that when I print using the Roland spots the colors are brighter, my media is
wet and takes a lot longer to dry, and I can visibly see that there is more ink on the media leads me to believe that there is more ink being put down in order to achieve the vibrant colors....similar to how the "Max Impact" setting achieves the same thing.
Versaworks has a setting you can check off called "Convert Special Colors" under File Management. Let's say you have a 100%C file- If it's not checked you get 100%C..if it
is checked you get the Versaworks converted, brighter, deeper version of 100%C. So how do they achieve that? Are they only putting down 80%C when the box is unchecked?
That setting converts a lot of regular cmyk mixes to the more saturated spot color versions. For instance, if checked, it will convert C:100 M:100 to the equivalent saturated PR26K even if you haven't used the spot color in your file. If unchecked the color comes out dull like regular cmyk.
Now, if you print C:100 M:15 (box checked) it doesn't recognize the "special color" and therefore doesn't automatically convert it to it's equivalent PR20K. You have to actually use the spot in the file in order for it to print saturated and bright.
All this to say that the majority of CMYK values aren't recognized by Versaworks as "special colors" and print within the regular percentage ink spectrum. The spot colors eliminate that inconsistency and create more saturated colors...logically I assumed this was achieved by putting down more ink but I'm looking into it.
I get what you're saying about 105% Cyan but you're comparing theoretical percentages to additive percentages(not sure if I used the right words). If you put down 100%C and 100%M is it now 100%Purple or is it 200%ink? If you set the printer to 2-pass print a block of 100% cyan will it not be a different color than if you printed it single pass? And will it not be 200% Cyan? Or is it still 100%Cyan but now darker....? My printer model has Light-Cyan and Light-Magenta ink as well. If 100%C is 100%C then what is the point of having the Light-Cyan?
If you could hit the spot colors with simple CMYK blends then there would be nothing special about Roland's spot library.
So if we're talking about what makes the Roland Spots unique or better than just using a plain cmyk swatch library the reason is because it can hit colors that regular cmyk cannot.
