Greg said:
I believe I'm right in saying the difference between coated and uncoated is that coated is literally just laminated - so shows you how the pantone colour will look when matt/gloss laminated.
Coated stock is not the same as gloss lamination. Coated stock may be more commonly referred to as gloss art board (the most common for promotional print work), where the paper traditionally has a clay-like content to give it a sheen. Uncoated stock could be referred to as silk, or more commonly matt - a rougher finish, like bond photocopy or letterhead paper.
Gloss lamination heightens the gloss finish to the nth degree, but when you consider that matt lamination is available then clearly these finishing processes have no bearing on pantone colour books.
The issue of 15% 'saturation' may be referring to the fact that 15% yellow does not have the same impact as 15% black, tonally. So you need to bear that in mind if you're using pastel shades and expected type to be legible.
Going below 15% black to make text look light grey is going too far, especially for very small and fine text - where the individual dots of the screening process will make the text look rougher and rougher, simply becuase the dots are spaced too far apart.
Graduated tints are something that can lead the novice astray. Try to think how one end of the spectrum will blend through to the other in terms of individual C M Y and K values. For instance going from black to dark blue is going to look best going from C100M100Y0K100 to C100M100Y0K0. If you try to blend from just 100% K (no cyan or magenta content) there will be a washed-out greyish area in the grad just before the C and M components really bite. The problem is that most RGB monitors will show a healthy saturated grad.
Going for a paper proof is value for money on initial work. Another thing to try is to produce a CMYK print-ready PDF, then RIP that back into Photoshop, and look at the CMYK channels in isolation. This can often highlight banding, knockout and overprint issues.
It's a minefield, and requires that you give yourself every chance to proof and reproof your work, until the day your feel for printing on paper becomes second-nature.
It's only taken me about 20 years
