Spot colors

Normally four colors are used when printing, cyan, magenta, yellow and black (key) commonly known as CMYK. But it's also possible to produce spot colors. Spot colors are not normally printed using the CMYK inks, and are instead additional inks.

Spot colors have two uses:

Many simple jobs use only two or three ink colors (for example a simple newsletter with black text and blue headings). Creating a spot color for each ink color can make the job cheaper to print.

Some complex jobs require either PANTONE COLOR BRIDGE colors or special inks that cannot be reproduced in CMYK such as gold or silver. These special colors require spot colors.

See chapter PANTONE colors for more on PANTONE COLOR BRIDGE.

Note: As each spot color is an additional ink and printing plate, it does increase printing costs.

Spot colors appear as circles on the Color Line and Color Gallery.

Spot colors are always Named colors.

Technical notes on color separations:

Tints based on a spot color output on that spot separation. So if you require a lighter shade of a spot color, define the color as a Tint of the spot color.
Shades and linked colors based on a spot color output on the CMYK separations.

Objects with transparency applied always output on the CMYK separations, not to the spot separation.