Economic considerations

[Carlos Ribeiro]

On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 17:54:03 -0300, Jorge Godoy <godoy at ieee.org> wrote:
> [on Pantone spot colors]
> Interesting.  And what kind of printer has Pantone support built in?  I
> suppose that for such an accuracy you'd have to have a printer that
> supports it, otherwise you might miss something while converting to/from
> CMYK or RGB.

Besides Alex's pointers, professional printing shops also have Pantone
inks available. Instead of printing a CMYK separation, you can print a
few plates using Pantone spots. It's not generally used for magazines,
where four-color separations (or even six-color, for Hexachrome) are
the best choice -- mainly because you can never tell which colors are
you going to need to print full-color photographs and stuff. But it's
widely used for things such as texture printing, for textiles and
wallpaper; special editions of books with few colors (for example,
using only black & sienna for a elegant old look style; and also for
things such as logos and outdoors signaling, where color matching is
*must*, and the number of different colors in a single print is small
-- less than four colors, in most cases.

p.s. A *very small* difference is a big problem, for example, if
you're aligning textures printed with different equipment with poor
color matching in one or both of them. Even the untrained eye can spot
it easily.

p.s. It's common for companies to name the Pantone color that is to be
used when printing the logo. It's way easier, and more precise, than
checking the color card visually.

-- 
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
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mail: carribeiro at gmail.com
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