Spot Colors

What are spot colors?

When we are talking about spot colors, we are often talking about the print world though it has application in the digital world. Spot colors are colors that when printed, were done in a singular run whether they are pure colors or mixed colors. These colors are premixed and aren’t mixed after, to create more colors. For comparison, process colors are also pure or mixed colors but these instead are created by mixing a set of colors to create a wider array of colors to use while printing. The color mode typically used for this is CMYK coloring.

What is it used for?

As most things is this world do, spot coloring has its place. Depending on what you are printing,it may be more or less important that everything is as perfect as possible. This is where spot coloring comes in. Say you are having a logo printed, or are printing something that has a specific shade of color that dominates most of the print. Spot coloring will be good for this because the colors are premixed for the purpose of matching the colors used, and maintaining color accuracy. Usually when using spot colors you would like for your image to have very few distinct colors within it as well. Process colors fail to do this as well because of the fact that they have to mix colors to try their best to match the color that is needed versus having the exact color ready and using that instead. On top of this, CMYK doesn’t quite cover every color that spot colors could. Not to say that printing using process colors is bad, its just situational on whether it may be better to use spot colors. As long as you are okay with the color variation that could occur or have a very multicolored image in which spot colors may be impractical, CMYK coloring still provides very good results.