Lots of things affect the way colours appear and so on it is sometimes difficult to get an exact match. PRINTING INKS Few Spot colours can be reproduced faithfully from our 4 process colours- that's why they exist! Spot colours are mixed up in a bucket like paint. They are often used when printing in two colours - on letterheads, for example. The printer then puts this coloured ink into his machine. Process colours, on the other hand are used when you print in full colour, required for colour photos, and a mixture of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black inks. Tiny dots of these inks are printed on the paper in various sizes - these dots make up the different colours. If you look very closely at a colour picture in a newspaper you'll see these dots. Using spot colours enables you to achieve special colours like metallics, fluorescents and very vivid colours. Process colours allow you to faithfully reproduce photographs. DIFFERENT PAPER EQUALS DIFFERENT COLOUR The same ink colours will look different when printed on different papers. This effect is most noticeable when the same colour is seen on glossy and letterhead paper. The colour on letterhead looks less vibrant.
| ON-SCREEN COLOURS ARE OFF-TARGET COLOURS Colours you see on screen are never the same as those you see on a printed page. Screens make up colours by using glowing phosphors in red, green and blue varieties. Full colour printed paper uses inks that are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. What you see onscreen is often very different to what you'll see on the printed page. MY SCREEN'S BETTER THAN YOUR SCREEN! Colours vary widely from monitor to monitor. There are a host of reason; diferent brightness or contrast settings; how old your monitor is and who made it; different software colour matching. Even the same file viewed in different applications will probably look different. There is plenty you can do about this - calibrate your monitor, standardise colour settings etc. |
Colour Matching 
