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A HANDY GUIDE TO DESIGNING FOR FLEXOGRAPHY

Chapter 2 - UNDERSTANDING SEPARATIONS

SPOT VS. PROCESS COLOR
apples

Understanding the difference between spot and process color is extremely important when designing a job for flexography. Apart from minimizing prepress cost, the difference can effect trapping, print repeatability, color accuracy and the overall readability of any text that may knock out of the color in question.

PROCESS COLOR

Process color is the combination of different percentages of cyan, magenta, yellow and black to produce an infinite number of perceived colors. In most cases, process color is used to print multicolored imagery like the apples to the right- Objects that can’t be achieved with flat spot colors.process to spot 1

SPOT COLOR

Spot color is when you assign one color, or percentages of that color, to a particular object.




process to spot 2

This circle can also be designed to print 4-color process

Spot 168 is made from one plate and one station on press where as it’s process equivalent needs three plates and three stations to print on press. It is also important to note that PMS 168 is matched to a Pantone standard while it’s process equivalent is not. The process equivalent, once dot gain and registation factor in, will not always match the spot color it was derived from.



UNDERSTANDING PROCESS COLOR

The benefit of four color process is that it only takes four printing plates and four stations on press to achieve an almost infinite number of colors. Percentages, or screens of cyan, yellow,magenta and black, appear as cicular shaped dots under a high powered magnifying glass. These dots fluctuate in size and angle in order to achieve the wide gamut of color seen in the image below.

apples2
proc to spot 3

This figures above show a small sampling of the image of the apples. Broken into their respective separations, each process color plays a part in creating the various shades that are printed.

proc vs spot 4

Enlarged, it is easy to see how the size and angle of each dot can create the seemingly infinite spectrum of color.

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