Spot Colors?

Pantone Colours are spot colours. You get Pantone swatch books as reference guides to the colours you can use in a print job. As an example, I deal with a local travel agency whose letterheads are in Pantone colours 032 and Reflex Blue... which makes the thing a 2 colour job. Spot colours are basically set colours that are not made up of CMYK when they go to press, and are either used if a client wants a 1-3 colour job (ofetn to save money, as metal plates are produced for the press), or add a 5th colour, usually metallic or florescent ink to a 4 colour (CMYK) job on a lithograph press (such as a Komori).

If you are creating work for print, it might be useful (if you're freelancing) to pick up a Pantone Solid Coated and Uncoated swatch book... they can be pretty pricey, but are worth if in order to give you a true representation of how the ink will look on the final job, as I'm sure you are aware, what you see on screen is NOT the same colour as you get from a laser printer, desk jet, or indeed a lithograph press.
 
Thanks for your reply, I got another question though.. what program do you recommend for a business card to be made in? Photoshop or Illustrator?
 
InDesign. I've made hundreds, pretty much all of them 85x55mm, 3mm bleed. It's easy to use spot colours in InDesign, I just use Illustrator to create logos and various vector graphics to bring into InDesign... if you're new to print, you won't be able to create say a 2 colour business card in photoshop... there are workarounds, but if you're giving the thing to a professional printer to set up for plating, they'll dislike you and say rude things about you behind your back :p
 
I should also add, you can use Illustrator to create business cards and the like and supply the things as a PDF to a printer... but i find it's a messy way of working... although I'm sure others on here use it for similar. My problem with it is you can't package a project up when it's done, and you will have font issues... they won't auto load etc and it'll be more awkward to work on when doing amends/creating business cards for new ppl at the same company in my experience.
 
Nik said:
InDesign. I've made hundreds, pretty much all of them 85x55mm, 3mm bleed. It's easy to use spot colours in InDesign, I just use Illustrator to create logos and various vector graphics to bring into InDesign:p


Or just use freehand.

Freehand. Quark. InDesign all suitable for 'Set To Print" jobs.
 
blimey freehand.. not used that in a few years...

Its like CoralDraw a bit of an oddity these days :)
 
Hehe, yeah the last place I worked at used Corel and had just upgraded from Freehand to Illustrator.

Anyways, to echo what people are saying- InDesign is the best for any sort of "layout" work (using spot colour in your case).....Photoshop (for me)=image retouching/image general image treatment (NOT LAYOUT PLEASE NO....oh the thousands of layers!) and Illustrator (for me) = the arty stuff (like logo creation etc)...
 
chrismitchell said:
blimey freehand.. not used that in a few years...

Its like CoralDraw a bit of an oddity these days :)


Have a look at the latest Creative Review - theres a nice Freehand piece written by Michael Johnson.

Nice and interesting read.
 
Oh cool :D will look out for that in the creative review today :D should be interesting.
 
aww there's nothing wrong with Quark ... its a like your Grandma.. old and doesn't work anymore.. but your love it anyway :)
 
chrismitchell said:
aww there's nothing wrong with Quark ... its a like your Grandma.. old and doesn't work anymore.. but your love it anyway :)

Or in my case, dead, so it still rings true ;)
 
I still have a copy of freehand somewhere... not used it in a while though.. i even bought it which is funny :lol:
 
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