A BIT ABOUT COLOUR
Your computer, scanner, digital camera and monitor create images
using combinations of just three colours: Red, Green and Blue (RGB).
Printing presses use four different colours to print these images –
Cyan (light blue), Magenta (pinky red), Yellow and BlacK (or CMYK
– also known as Process Colour). At some stage of production, RGB
images must be converted to CMYK.
CYAN
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Conversions from RGB to CMYK are best done in packages like
Photoshop or Photopaint and you should do this before sending
your file to us. If you don’t perform the conversion yourself, when
we print your file, our process will apply a standard profile RGB to
CMYK conversion meaning that colours may look washed out.
Traditional printers often use Pantone® Spot colours when printing
MAGENTA
work. Spot colours are mixed like paint and printed one at a time.
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As we use Process Colour, all Pantone® Spot colours must be
converted to their CMYK equivalent before your file is sent to us.
Specifying conversion to process colours at the print stage will not
meet with our requirements.
If you don’t convert spot colours to process, then an extra separation
printing plate may be produced when we process your job. This
means objects may not appear on your printed job and may result
YELLOW
in you incurring unnecessary costs.
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You can check your document by printing ‘separations’ on your
desktop printer – see the help file that came with your application
for more details. If anything other than a cyan, magenta, yellow
and black separation prints, then you’ve got unwanted colours that
you need to convert. This is also a good way of checking knock-
out/overprinting settings.
BLACK
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Some RGB and Spot colours do not have a direct CMYK equivalent
– the technical term for this is “out of gamut”. If you have chosen
a colour that is out of gamut, your software will choose the closest
equivalent CMYK colour, which may be very different from the colour
you intended. This is something that everyone has to put up with,
so for best results, stick with colours from our colour chart.
PROCESS COLOUR (CMYK)
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