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Full Colour (aka Four Colour) process printing
The most common colour system for print, producing full colour.The vast majority of magazines and colour books are produced using four-colour process.
Originally the artwork and originals were separated photographically using filters to produce four printing plates. Today's separation and production is carried out digitally. The four ink colours are Cyan (Blue), Magenta (Red), Yellow and Black - often referred to as CMYK. Because the inks used are translucent, they can be overprinted and combined in a variety of different proportions to produce hundreds of thousands of possible colour combinations.
Although the range of colours that can be achieved is suitable for most jobs the process has its limitations.It is important to remember that many colours that are available as special inks (spot colours) have no close equivalent in four-colour process.
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Spot colour printing
Spot colour printing is not like full colour process printing. In full colour process printing, four primary colours (cyan, magenta, yellow & black) are used offering hundreds of thousands of possible combinations to create full colour printing.
In spot colour printing, single colours of ink are used that limit the possible colour combinations to those specific inks. For example, if you had a spot colour job that was being printed in green ink, the only variations in colour you will see is where the ink has been "screened" to give the appearance of a lighter shade.
If you are printing with two colours, you are limited to those two colours and the lighter shades available through screening those two colours.
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| While there are some limitations to spot colour printing, there are also some advantages over full colour printing:
Cost: Particularly on shorter runs, spot colour printing can cost significantly less than full colour printing
Vibrancy and availability of colours: Because of the way spot colours are mixed, there are numerous colours that can be created with spot colour inks that can't be duplicated in full colour printing such as fluorescent inks, metallic inks, mat, gloss and tinted varnishes.
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