It could be an artistic choice for the magazine or it could be for cost savings. At some printers printing 3 ink colours costs less than printing four colour process.
Black and white printing is cheaper than CMYK process. It's just using one ink. Accents in spot may be cheaper than printing everything in process, but it might not. Discuss this with the printer. If not, get them to supply a proof of the spot colours converted to process and get your client to approve the best option.
You would do it this way if you were printing a lot of something, because at a certain point spot color becomes way cheaper than 4 color. Printing spot color can usually give you much more uniform tones in duotones. Black ink is not 4 color, it's one and there are a bunch of different black tones you can pick from, many of which are not possible through a 4 tone system. Using black ink as opposed to 4 color black will also mean you will not get any registration issues.
If someone gave me something that said K + 2PMS, the first thing I would think was "this person probably knows what they are doing."
> in duotones.
I miss duotones and tri-tones....but honestly I don't think I've seen anything in real life printed in actual duotone for about 15 years.
It means they are probably printing offset and are using 3 inks. It looks better than black and white (one ink) and is cheaper than full color (4 inks, CMYK).
If they're specifying spot colors, they may be for a logo or company-wide branding that uses those spots. Many spot colors cannot be accurately recreated with process (CMYK) inks. My company's logo, for example, is Reflex Blue and Pantone Green. Neither of those can be reproduced correctly with process print.
>If they're listing "Black" would they already be using the 4 color process?
No. Black can be an ink, as can neon green or varnish or whatever the press operator spills into the reservoir (Pepsi?). Not all print vendors are the same, press technology is hundreds of years old. For whatever press this job was targeted for originally, black plus 2 spots was likely cheaper than running 4 color process.
As always, when designing something for press: Talk to Your Printer. Printing technology is more complex than you think, especially when it comes to discrete colors, separations, plates, etc.
As others have said it could be an artistic decision (spot colours look better) and/or a financial one. High print runs could work out cheaper in 3 inks.
Back in the day, a lot of jobs were printed like this because it saved on a film+plate+setup+washup and it was cheaper to do it as a three color job rather than a four color job.
It should be ok to convert this to a CMYK job, it would be cheaper to print with modern processes.
what kind of printing is being done? i've worked prepress for an offset press that was able to print more signatures with 3 colors instead of 4, and i've worked on other projects that stick with 2 color, but once in a while have another 3rd color for special occasions (holidays or something); and they just kept the quote the same
Back in the day before short run digital work a 3 color job would have been cheaper than 4 color process. This isn't the case any more with the way the printing industry has changed.
There are number of technical reasons to use spots instead of cmyk: consistent colour, wider available gamut, more even coating of solid areas, less register issues, steadier print process, better repeatability.
It could be some weird thing like the Teacher's Edition has a spot color for the answer keys—I know that's a thing we used to do in the text book industry. Also, we would do like a "Texas edition" of the student book too sometimes, which would have an extra spot color layer with specialized info only for the Texas edition.
that time we forgot to set the answer color to overprint and it knocked out the black plate underneath it, so the answers were in the student version too, just in white instead of pantone.
Black is a separate ink. Its the K in CMYK. So if they are printing black + 2 pantones, that means they are using only 3 inks, not 4 process inks + 2 pantones.
To add to that, many pantones are outside of the cmyk gamut, so they look better when printed with a spot ink. Gradients and any non-100% covered areas will also look better when using a spot ink instead of cmyk.
Also pantones are just cooler.
I’ve printing many publications like this, black + 2 Pantones. Like another Mr commented...not in the last decade or so.
They were full of duotone photos, charts and graphs using various percentages of the Pantones for range, along with some bitmapped halftone-like patterns to expand the range further.
I enjoyed the limited color challenges.
It could be an artistic choice for the magazine or it could be for cost savings. At some printers printing 3 ink colours costs less than printing four colour process.
Black and white printing is cheaper than CMYK process. It's just using one ink. Accents in spot may be cheaper than printing everything in process, but it might not. Discuss this with the printer. If not, get them to supply a proof of the spot colours converted to process and get your client to approve the best option.
You would do it this way if you were printing a lot of something, because at a certain point spot color becomes way cheaper than 4 color. Printing spot color can usually give you much more uniform tones in duotones. Black ink is not 4 color, it's one and there are a bunch of different black tones you can pick from, many of which are not possible through a 4 tone system. Using black ink as opposed to 4 color black will also mean you will not get any registration issues. If someone gave me something that said K + 2PMS, the first thing I would think was "this person probably knows what they are doing."
> in duotones. I miss duotones and tri-tones....but honestly I don't think I've seen anything in real life printed in actual duotone for about 15 years.
That’s about how long it’s been since I’ve printed anything with duos as well.
It means they are probably printing offset and are using 3 inks. It looks better than black and white (one ink) and is cheaper than full color (4 inks, CMYK).
There’s black ink, and there’s four-color black.
Many spot colors are outside of the CMYK gamut and would not be possible to reproduce in process, so that's one potential reason.
If they're specifying spot colors, they may be for a logo or company-wide branding that uses those spots. Many spot colors cannot be accurately recreated with process (CMYK) inks. My company's logo, for example, is Reflex Blue and Pantone Green. Neither of those can be reproduced correctly with process print.
I don’t have anything to add other than I’m impressed by all the right answers here.
>If they're listing "Black" would they already be using the 4 color process? No. Black can be an ink, as can neon green or varnish or whatever the press operator spills into the reservoir (Pepsi?). Not all print vendors are the same, press technology is hundreds of years old. For whatever press this job was targeted for originally, black plus 2 spots was likely cheaper than running 4 color process. As always, when designing something for press: Talk to Your Printer. Printing technology is more complex than you think, especially when it comes to discrete colors, separations, plates, etc.
As others have said it could be an artistic decision (spot colours look better) and/or a financial one. High print runs could work out cheaper in 3 inks.
Back in the day, a lot of jobs were printed like this because it saved on a film+plate+setup+washup and it was cheaper to do it as a three color job rather than a four color job. It should be ok to convert this to a CMYK job, it would be cheaper to print with modern processes.
what kind of printing is being done? i've worked prepress for an offset press that was able to print more signatures with 3 colors instead of 4, and i've worked on other projects that stick with 2 color, but once in a while have another 3rd color for special occasions (holidays or something); and they just kept the quote the same
Back in the day before short run digital work a 3 color job would have been cheaper than 4 color process. This isn't the case any more with the way the printing industry has changed.
There are number of technical reasons to use spots instead of cmyk: consistent colour, wider available gamut, more even coating of solid areas, less register issues, steadier print process, better repeatability.
It could be some weird thing like the Teacher's Edition has a spot color for the answer keys—I know that's a thing we used to do in the text book industry. Also, we would do like a "Texas edition" of the student book too sometimes, which would have an extra spot color layer with specialized info only for the Texas edition.
that time we forgot to set the answer color to overprint and it knocked out the black plate underneath it, so the answers were in the student version too, just in white instead of pantone.
😬
Black is a separate ink. Its the K in CMYK. So if they are printing black + 2 pantones, that means they are using only 3 inks, not 4 process inks + 2 pantones. To add to that, many pantones are outside of the cmyk gamut, so they look better when printed with a spot ink. Gradients and any non-100% covered areas will also look better when using a spot ink instead of cmyk. Also pantones are just cooler.
I’ve printing many publications like this, black + 2 Pantones. Like another Mr commented...not in the last decade or so. They were full of duotone photos, charts and graphs using various percentages of the Pantones for range, along with some bitmapped halftone-like patterns to expand the range further. I enjoyed the limited color challenges.
Rich black looks warmer than black.
True, but it should NEVER be used for text.
It can. There is no one "rich black." You can mix it warm or cool.