In printing terminology, we often hear of the terms four color printing and spot color printing, which are widely used in paper and printed materials such as picture albums, books, and flyers. But most people are not sure when to choose four-color printing and when to choose spot color printing in actual production. Today, we will explore the concepts, differences, and applications of spot color printing and four color printing with everyone. Let‘s learn together.

1. Four color printing

Four color printing is the color you need printed using CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) four color register. Simply put, it means using the different overlays of these four colors to obtain the color you need. As long as there is a gradient in color, it is printed using four color overprinting. Four color printing is done by overlaying dots, and different colored dots can be seen using a magnifying glass.

2. Spot color printing

Spot color printing refers to the printing process of using ink colors other than yellow, magenta, cyan, and black to replicate the original color. Spot color printing technology is often used in packaging printing to print a large area of background color. Spot color printing is a single color without gradient, with solid patterns that cannot be seen with a magnifying glass. Generally speaking, the cost of spot color printing is slightly higher.

3. What product must be printed in four colors

Photographs taken by color photography that reflect the rich and colorful color changes in nature, painters‘ color art works, or other images containing many different colors must be scanned and separated by electronic color separators or color desktop systems due to technological requirements or economic considerations, and then replicated using a four color printing process.

4. What kind of product will use spot color printing

Some packaging products, book and magazine covers, and picture book covers are often composed of uniform color blocks of different colors or regular gradient color blocks and text. These color blocks and text can be separated and printed with four primary color ink, or mixed with spot color ink, and then printed with only one type of spot color ink at the same color block. Under the comprehensive consideration of improving printing quality and saving overprinting times, spot color printing is often chosen. Packaging printing often uses spot color printing to print a large area of background color.

5. What are the differences in visual effects between spot color printing and four color overprinting

Spot color printing has lower color brightness and higher saturation; Spot color blocks with uniform ink color are usually printed on site, and the amount of ink should be appropriately increased. When the ink layer thickness of the layout is large, the sensitivity of the change in ink layer thickness to color changes will be reduced, making it easier to obtain a uniform and thick printing effect with ink color.

The color blocks printed using a four color printing process are prone to changes in color intensity due to changes in ink layer thickness and printing process conditions. The change in the degree of dot enlargement, resulting in a color change. Therefore, using a four color printing process to print color blocks, it is not easy to achieve a uniform ink color effect.

From the perspective of economic benefits, it mainly depends on whether using spot color printing technology can save the number of overprinting times. Because reducing the number of overprinting times can not only save printing costs, but also save the cost of pre press production.

If a product has both a color layered image and a large area of background color, the color layered image can be printed in four colors, while the large area of background color can be printed in spot colors.