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Other answers have described in detail why you can't expect 100% color likeness when printing with Pantone inks (mainly because they are not colors but inks).
My guess is that it leaves you with the question: "If printing with Pantone inks have these additional risks of slight shifts in color, why even bother using them?". As you stated yourself in ...
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Yeah, you are totally missing something . . . the actual purpose the Pantone system is used for.
There is natural variation in colour when printing on a commercial printing press. (Not talking about digital printers here, but traditional printing presses such as offset lithography). Obviously, there are quality standards, which if not met could lead to ...
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Spot
A Pantone is a Pantone when it's a "spot" color.
Make sure your Pantone swatches have the color type "spot color". Even if you color swatch says Pantone XYZ, it doesn't make it a Pantone; if it's not a spot color, it will be considered as a process color (CMYK).
Conversion during export
If you are 100% certain that your swatches are ...
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Pantone's (very fast!) reply, which was signed off for publication here by the very friendly tech rep.
Pantone has many different color sets that are designed to specify and communicate color across different industries. The Pantone Plus Series is based on graphics/printing ink and is the well-known Pantone Matching System (PMS) that has been around for 50+...
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Transparent inks can't stick to the surface of metallic inks.
We've recently had this problem at the offset print house where I work. We wanted to print a black and white image where all the white areas were silver and for unknown reasons we forgot what we already knew.
First we simply printed a solid silver rectangle and printed the black image on top of ...
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Color Separation
This is the process of taking the artwork and (for the lack of a better term) separating the colors to facilitate the creation of the individual printing plates. To show by example, here's a 3 color job:
Your printer probably won't expect you to create the plates with the trim and registration marks†, but you can certainly help them out by ...
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Simply:
CMYK is not mixed. A printing process generally do not mix colors. It is kind of the holy grail of printing processes but it does not really exist as of yet.
What happens instead is that printing processes layer transparent inks on top of each other. Each ink only being able to produce either full ink color or no ink color. The indeterminate colors ...
16
TLDR: No, spot colours are not more limited than CMYK, and they aren't treated the same because they are different printing processes.
Process printing (or CMYK printing, also sometimes called full-colour printing) uses separate inks. They aren't mixed.
The inks are layered onto the paper, usually using halftone dots to build up a pattern of dots to ...
15
Let me explore. Some are obvious things. Others need to be further explored.
We had a printing company print 100,000 stickers and even between this
batch there were slight changes of hue
First, we need to really explore if you had a change in Hue
Hue is a change in "color", you printed red and it turned into blue. There is no way this can occur ...
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NOTE: This got way longer than I expected, and I purposely glossed over a LOT of detail. If you'd like me to elaborate, just ask.
PMS Colors - Absolutely brilliant when used as designed for pre-mixed spot color offset printing. You can be assured the color you saw in your Pantone book is very closely represented in your final printed piece.
The problem is, ...
11
You're pretty much spot on, they are formulated differently for the different papers. Uncoated is a more matte finish whereas coated is for glossier finishes, although in part that is down to coated paper being naturally more glossy. Additionally due to the lack of the steaming and pressing process, uncoated stock is by far more absorbent and requires the ...
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Also depends on where they are stored. if in a dark drawer and only pulled out when used, they will maintain accurate color longer.
I've never replaced mine just because it's been a year -- I mean Pantone just wants money. Wish I could tell clients "It's been a year. We need to redo that design."
I replace mine when I start feeling like the colors aren't ...
9
My answer applies to silkscreen printing only so make sure that's the kind of printing you are dealing with before using this information and also double check the specifics with your printer, better safe than sorry!
What does it mean to colour separate the artwork in T-Shirt printing?
Like in many printing methods, silkscreen printing prints one color at ...
9
Interesting question.
Pantone is not a manufacturer of inks, Pantone is a color matching system.
When you're using Pantone colours
You are not using a "Pantone color", you are using a color that is labeled in a specific way by a system that has some specific rules and values to be reproduced by ink manufacturers and print shops.
I will separate "rules" ...
9
In my experience brand color palettes are often inaccurate and overly simplified.
This is probably done to make it easier to use for amateurs and keep people on a "need to know basis", but it does not ensure color likeness across different media.
When you start to understand just a little bit about color management, it can actually be very ...
8
What does it mean to colour separate the artwork in T-Shirt printing?
To color separate the artwork means the printer will typically isolate CMYK or the pantone colors for one plate/screen. This typically depends on the design and the printer. If you're printing a shirt with a DTG printer than separation is typically not needed unless printing on a black ...
8
CMYK colours rarely will add up to 100, and there is no reason they should.
Each of the numbers in CMYK (xx,xx,xx,xx) ARE percentages of coverage of each colour, Not ratios of the total.
A lot will be well under, take a very light magenta colour (light pink if you ilke) could be 00,10,00,00
Some will be over 100, take a really strong green: 50,00,100,00
...
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Alright a typical printer has 4 cartridges, CMYK. It looks kinda like this with the black cartridge usually a bit larger because it gets used more frequently:
If you print on this printer and the image has green in it then its going to put tiny dots on the paper of both Cyan and Yellow in order to make that green. This is what CMYK process is.
Pantone and ...
7
I had exactly the same problem you have, with almost the same colours: two blues. My solution was very similar to what Scott suggested in his answer but, (instead of overprinting one gradient on the other one) I ended up, by the suggestion of the printer, overprinting a gradient of 0 to 100% of the darker blue over an area of 100% of the lighter blue.
This ...
7
Get your (or borrow a) Pantone swatch book and hold it up next to the wallpaper until you find a close match.
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Bridge guides provide "process color simulations of all solid PANTONE Color". In other words, the bridge guides are all printed in CMYK to match Pantone spot colors as close as possible. You see the CMYK color on the guide along side the actual Pantone spot color. This lets you compare how close the CMYK color is to the spot ink.
Formula Guides are printed ...
7
My experience is that yes, the colors do change but in the end it really depends what kind of use you are making of your charts. The Pantone people are obviously responsible for consistency so they won't outright tell you that your charts might be fine for a long time.
If you are trying to match things like fabric that goes on a book cover to a Pantone ...
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I guess this pack is what you are looking for. It shows tints of all Pantone inks in 10% increments and some more, including reversed out text and some overprinting.
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CMYK.
The Pantone matching system is a print production ink system. Print production always uses CMYK as a basis. Pantone colors have absolutely no basis in the RGB spectrum.
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match specific colors across different media (print and digital)
There is no digital 'match'.
Pantone is a company that sets color standards for custom printing inks (and some other things, but mainly printing inks). As Scott states, this is usually spot colors (the custom colors) but they also offer CMYK.
Regardless, this all takes place in a ...
6
Process black is a more transparent ink, which will give you a grayish look.
If you want a darker black use for example Neutral black 165-1-7c. But it is important than you talk to the printer and tell him that you want the blackest one possible. It is not that important that you specify it on the file. It is more important that you clarify this talking to ...
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But how is this achieved?
The system is not perfect. I personally do not like a lot of dumb decisions they made. But the basic idea is that they have:
A catalog of consistent printed colors.
A set of base colors and the formulas to achive the derivated colors.
The base colors have some specific values on colorimetry that are repeatable by diferent ...
6
Conversion is Futile, as the Borg would say.
For this type of situation, and to save ANY doubt, you need a set of Pantone colour charts.
Your client picks a colour, and the final sign is delivered in that exact colour - its why they exist.
Bonus: they look cool on your shelf.
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A coated Pantone® sample does look different than an uncoated Pantone®. I guess if you'd never seen it in person that this might be hard to imagine. If you can get your hands on an actual color book you'll see why that is.
Edit: I'm going to add this because it might help people understand in more detail Look at the answer by
go-junta and the picture ...
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