Updated on September 11, 2024
When it comes to printing your books, the book printing manufacturer will usually ask you what color printing you want, whether it is four-color printing(CMYK) or spot color printing. So what is four-color printing? What is spot color printing? CMYK and spot color printing:which is good ?Please follow my article,you will find the answer what you want.
What is four-color printing?
The four-color printing (CMYK) is use the subtractive three primary colors (yellow, magenta, cyan) and black for printing, or it can be said to use the red, green, blue three primary colors and black colorants (ink or dyes) lithographic printing methods that achieve full-color reproduction according to the principle of subtractive color mixing.
What is spot color printing?
Spot color printing refers to the printing process of reproducing the original color with ink other than yellow, magenta, cyan and black ink. In the book printing, spot color printing is often used to print large-area background colors.
The difference between four-color printing and spot color printing
The applicable products are different
Four-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, for technical requirements or economic benefits. Considering the color separation must be scanned by an electronic color separation machine or a color desktop system, and then copied by a four-color printing process.
Spot color printing: The covers of packaging products or books 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 be Mix the spot color ink, and then print only one spot color ink on the same color block. In the case of comprehensively considering improving the printing quality and saving the number of overprints, it is sometimes necessary to use spot color printing.
Different printing costs
When we custom book printing, due to the cost involved, if you can use spot colors to print, you can use the prepared spot color ink to print on the machine, which will save a lot of printing labor, plate-making,film production fee costs than four-color printing.
Different visual effects
Four color printing obtains the comprehensive effect of subtractive absorption and additive mixing of dots. The color block has high brightness and low saturation;The ink prepared for the spot color printing is obtained according to the mixing principle of color subtraction method. Its color brightness is low and its saturation is high.
CMYK and spot color printing: which is better?
From the point of view of economic benefits, it mainly depends on whether the spot color printing process can save the times of overprint. Because reducing the times of overprint can not only save the printing cost, but also save the cost of prepress production.
In fact, four-color printing and spot-color printing can be used at the same time. For example, if the screen of a certain product has both a color-level screen and a large-area background color, the color-level screen part can be printed in four colors, while the large-area screen can be printed in four colors. The base color can be printed in spot color.
To sum up, there is no better difference between four-color printing and spot color printing, only suitability. When you consider use which kind of color printing for your product, the most important is to choose which color printing suitable for you. I believe the professional book printing company will give you the best suggestion.
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