Managing Swatches in Four-Color Designs

When designing four-color artwork for printing, it is important to manage spot and CMYK color swatches for the job to print correctly. The colors in the artwork must separate onto four distinct plates — cyan, magenta, yellow, and black — that run on the press. If a color is labeled anything other than CYMK (process), it will be missing from the plates.

Do not create swatches in RGB mode. (RGB — red, green, blue — colors are used to display images electronically on computer monitors and TV screens; they must be converted to CMYK before printing.) RGB swatches may appear in your palette due to importing text from a Word document. Text imported from Word may appear to be black but is actually an RGB color. This text will need to be changed to 100 percent black; or if the RGB swatch is indeed a color, convert the swatch to CMYK.

Do not choose swatches from the Pantone (spot) libraries. Or, if you do, be sure to convert them to process (CMYK) color before submitting your artwork for printing. (Note that even though all Pantone colors have a pre-defined CMYK formula, some convert better to CMYK process color than others. Please ask us!)

Sometimes Pantone colors will automatically appear in your palette as a result of importing a spot-color image file (e.g., a logo created in Illustrator) into your document. A good practice to follow is to have separate logo files for each color mode — spot and process.

When you close your file for the last time before submitting your artwork for printing, check your swatches palette again. Keep only those swatches that are actively used in your design. Delete duplicate swatches and unused swatches.
If you are designing a job that uses both CMYK and spot color, please feel free to contact us for any questions or advice.


Back to newsletter