What are CMYK, Pantone and RGB?

CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black: the four ‘process’ colours that commercial printers use to reproduce the illusion of continuous-tone full colour. Using these four coloured inks it is possible to create a wide variety (or ‘gamut’) of colours on paper – known as ‘subtractive’ colour.

However this is a limited process and sometimes it will be unable to accurately reproduce some images. On occasion the work can be be supplemented by two more colours – a green and an orange – to create a six colour proprietary system from Pantone known as Hexachrome™. Green and orange are added as these are difficult colours to reproduce accurately using just the four process colours.

Note: K for black? Why is it not CMYB?
The K in CMYK stands for key, which is derived from the printing term ‘key line’, widely used prior to digital age, when key lines were drawn onto artwork by hand and printers then ordered to fill these spaces with colour or image.

If specific colours are needed in a printed work, it may be appropriate to use ‘spot’ colour rather than the CMYK of ‘process’ colour. The most commonly used spot colour matching system is called Pantone. The Pantone company has established a standard for spot colours and produce a range of swatch materials. The important distinction between CMYK and spot colour is that whereas with CMYK a particular colour is reproduced as near as possible by mixing together dots of cyan, magenta, yellow and black, a spot colour is a solid colour, no dots, no mixing, no illusion – as someone once said: it does exactly what it says on the tin! This means that there is a much wider range of colour available to the designer, and that the printer and designer can work from the same reference material, ensuring consistency between artwork and printed job.

RGB stands for red, green and blue, a system of ‘additive’ colour used in TV screens and computer monitors. As with CMYK, the RGB system relies on mixing coloured dots to give the impression of something being full colour. The big difference is that CMYK does it with ink and RGB does it with light. It’s not possible to print with light, so it is not possible for commercial printers to accept artwork with any elements using the RGB colour system.

When on screen, even artwork being made using CMYK is represented using RGB (it’s the way that all monitors work). This means that reds, greens and blues can appear stronger than they will appear in print.

How do I get something commercially printed?

There are two ways you can do this. Either go to a printer direct, or have your design company to do it for you.

Either way, you’ll need someone to create artwork that is ready-to-print. This is not the same as having a job designed. Once you are happy with design visuals supplied by your designer, you will need to have artwork made that the commercial printer can deal with. Considerations including colour, scope (number of pages), size and shape can all affect the cost and final quality of a print job.

If in doubt, ask the printer for a spec sheet – this will tell you everything you need to know about what the printer expects to receive from you in the way of artwork. Design companies, on the whole, are used to seeing this kind of information, and can tailor a design job to get the best from your budget and print method.

Sometimes a commercial printer will offer to do the creative work for you. This may be in-house, or they may have links with one or more design studios. Be careful to choose the right designer for the job.

Commercial printers invest huge amounts in presses and other machinery (printing press costs commonly run into the millions of pounds), so to make money, they have to print stuff. It’s common sense really, but stop to think about it, it doesn’t matter WHAT they are printing, so long as the press is running they make money – this should ring alarm bells if what you actually want is great design.

Rule of thumb: if you want bread, go to a baker, if you want print, go to a printer, if you want design, go to… er, you get the message.

How do I choose a commercial printer?

Here’s a scenario: Acme Widget Makers have employed a design studio and now own a nice shiny CD that contains all the print-ready-artwork for their new product brochure ready to give to a commercial printer. They walk into the local high street ‘Speedy-Print’ and hand it over. A week later they collect their new brochures, smile happily, and pay the bill.

Where’s the problem?

Well, it’s probably the bill. Let’s start at the beginning…

There are a couple of kinds of commercial printers for doing jobs on paper and board. They’re usually known as ‘jobbing’ or ‘colour’ printers. Now to confuse things, both do colour jobs, but one will generally produce larger scale FULL colour (in essence, that’s photographic reproduction), whilst the other will do smaller work with maybe one or two colours in a job.

The point is this: if you take your job to the wrong one, they’ll most likely sub it out and probably charge you more than if you’d gone direct to the other one in the first place.

You can avoid this risk by asking to see examples of work from the printer before you get a quote. That way you’ll see what they do best, and can judge easily whether it fits your requirement.

Alternatively, you could ask your design firm to handle it all. Yes, they will charge for the additional service (usually by way of a mark up on the print price), but for that charge you will get assurance that the job will arrive with you efficiently and at top spec (and if not, well the designer is at fault and will bear the cost of a reprint – so you’re actually paying for a little ‘insurance’ too).

So, back to Acme Widgets, armed with a little knowledge, they instead take their brochure to ‘Big ‘n’ Shiny Colourprint’ on the out of town trading estate, and get a better price… but don’t forget that designer studios often get trade prices from printers – ask them to quote too.