whats the difference

[benluke@adobeforums.com]

Hi, Only ever produced full colour work but now having to do a lot of 2 colour jobs. This is probably a really dumb question but what exactly is the difference between solid coated and process coated pantone colours?

Thanks for any info

Ben

[mikewitherell_at_jetsetcom_dot_net]

Pantone makes ink. Physical, printing-press, oil-based inks in many colors. They publish a guide to choose ink colors. They publish physical swatchbooks as well as electronic files that Adobe uses in their softwares.

Solid inks are premixed inks that are the right color right out of the can. Trowel it into the fountain on a press and you have color match without fail.

A four-color process color is built-up on press by laying down amounts of CMYK, Cyan ink, magenta ink, Yellow ink, and (K)Black ink. From these four inks, you can simulate a whole gamut or spectrum of color. For example, if you print dots of cyan blue ink amongst dots of yellow ink, you achieve the visual appearance of green. Yet it is not green ink. A Pantone solid green would really be an ink premixed to a hue of green. On press, one solid ink would be applied versus 2 to 4 of the process CMYK inks being printed to simulate the same hue.

The term coated or uncoated refers to the kind of paper you are printing the ink upon. Coated stocks of paper are wood fiber compounded with clays to achieve a very dense, shiny surface. The ink tends to lay on top--not wick in--and so the coated stock printed piece looks shinier.

Uncoated stock, such as newsprint paper, has no clay in the paper, and allows ink to soak into the wood fiber of the paper. The result is far less shiny--duller of specularity than coated stock.

Bear in mind that process simulations of Pantone ink colors can never exactly match the hue. They can only get near, so don't expect to match Pantone solids in the process version.

Mike Witherell in Washington DC

[Larry_Grohman@adobeforums.com]

> Pantone makes ink. Physical, printing-press, oil-based inks in many colors

Good advice, except Pantone does not actually MAKE inks (AFAIK) but does
publish the specs for THEIR matching system. There are other matching
systems such as Toyo for example, but Pantone is the most widely used.

Actual inks in a can that printers use, come from manufactures such as
Spinks, VanSon, Cans, Toyo, and many more.. Pantone colors are mixed using
9 base colors, plus transparent white. All of the colors in the pantone
guide can be made from these base colors except a few special colors such as
072 blue, as well as metallics, and fluorescents. But you don't need to be
concerned about how a particular ink is made/mixed. That is up to the
printer. You just specify the color you want.

Larry

[benluke@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the indepth information very much appreciated.

Ben