Color Printing, Defined

When you need a commercial printer for your marketing collateral, it is but natural that your printing house would ask you a lot of questions about your requirements. Moreover, sometimes it can be difficult to answer most of them questions if you are not familiar with the words. In addition, most of the time, the terms can be a bit confusing for a nonprofessional like yourself.

One of the most common questions is whether to use color printing for your job. Your printing firm would definitely be asking you if they are going to use color for your print job. This is because if color is one of your requirements, then there is a whole busload of details that they would need from you.

So let us first define what color printing means

Obviously, when you say color printing there is definitely the application of color in your print job. According to Wikipedia.org, it is the method of reproducing your image or text in color. It is not application of black and white or even monochromatic scheme but an infusion of most of the colors you see in the spectrum.

When you use a full range of colors to reproduce a color image or picture, then what you have is a four-color process printing. It usually applies the CMYK as its primary ink colors. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Then there is the six-color process printing that applies a system that adds the colors orange and green to the CMYK for a wider range of shade.

You also have the ‘spot color’ inks, which you can use either alone or in combination with the four-color printing process. Spot color is so termed because you do not have to mix different shades and hues to create a particular color. The spot color inks can be printed on their own. Printers frequently use spot color compared to the four-process printing because of its unlimited and varied color inks that are available.

Therefore, the next question from your commercial printer would be whether to use spot color or the process colors, or even a combination of the two. As color is one of the essential elements to be considered in the reproduction of your marketing collateral, you need to decide which among the three would be appropriate for your needs, and more importantly, to your budget.

Do you need process colors? Alternatively, spot color would be suitable to bring out the brilliant shade of your images. On the other hand, would you prefer to use both?

Knowing the answers to the above questions would definitely save you money and time for your next marketing collateral.