What are Pantone® and spot color?
A spot color is printed with a single premixed ink instead of being built from the four process inks. Pantone® is the most widely used numbered catalog of such colors. Spot colors are chosen when a brand color must stay identical on every print run, or when a tone such as metallic cannot be reached with CMYK.
A CMYK color is a mix of dots from four inks, while a spot color is one ready-made ink. That is why a spot color gives the same tone on every run; small registration shifts or variations in the mixing ratio do not affect the result. Where brand-color consistency matters, this is its biggest advantage.
Pantone® is a brand name and the most common color-matching system; every color has a number and a physical swatch card. Printers may also use other catalogs, so confirm with your printer which one they expect. A Pantone® color you see on screen is only an approximation; the real reference is the printed swatch card.
A spot color means an extra ink and often an extra printing unit, so it raises the cost. It is therefore usually used sparingly and only where it is truly needed. Metallic, fluorescent or very saturated tones that CMYK cannot reach are where it makes the most sense.
In the file, a spot color should sit in its own channel or layer and be named the way your printer names it. If it is mixed into CMYK, the printer cannot tell which color is meant to print separately. Foil, by the way, is not a spot ink; it is a film transfer and a separate process.
How you do this in Grapxo
Grapxo does not invent Pantone® codes; you settle the brand spot colour and its name with your printer. In the file a spot color needs to sit in a separate channel or layer; for more, see CMYK, spot color and white ink on labels.
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