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Using Color
- 2-colour jobs: If you use duotones in a 2-colour job, the screen
angle of the second color should be different from the first color.
Many applications like QuarkXPress by default use the screen angle of
black for spot colors but most 2-color jobs are a mixture of black
and a spot color.
- Spot colors: We maintain a supply of 'standard' Pantone
colors. Using these colors in a job can be much cheaper than using
a specific PMS color that has to be ordered or custom mixed.
- Spot colors in a CMYK job: If you use a number of Pantone
colors in a job that will be printed in CMYK, you should mark these
colors for separation in the layout program. To check this, go to the
'Print' menu and select 'Separations'. Then have a look at the number
of plates that are shown.
- 4+ colors: If your jobs will be printed in more than 4 colors,
it may be worth talking to us before you start. We may be able to make
suggestions for your design has to adapt it to our equipment so we can easily
print the additional colors.
- XPress red, green and blue: Never use the Red, Green and Blue
colors from QuarkXPress. These are RGB-colors that are routinely switched
off by our prepress operators.
- Black in overprint: In most cases, black text, lines and fills
that overlap colorized backgrounds should be set to overprint. If this
is forgotten, it may cause white spaces when the job is printed.

- Rich black: For small black objects that are partly positioned
on a light background and partly on a darker background, it is better
to use a "rich black". This is 100 percent black with 40 percent cyan
and/or magenta added to it. This way the background does not shine through
the black object. The top bar in the example below shows the problem.

- White set to knock-out: QuarkXPress has the annoying habit
of forgetting to switch off 'overprint' settings when black text is
changed to another color. This can cause the text to disappear. Make
sure white text is set to 'knock-out'.

- Naming conventions: When you use spotcolors in a file, their
names should only contain the standard 27 characters of the alphabet
and numerals to 0 to 9. Use an underscore instead of a space if you
want to separate words in the name of a color. Using brackets of any
kind can lead to various PostScript problems on some RIPs.
- color matching: Some colors like clear oranges, violets and
greens as well as at least half of the Pantone colors that exist are
difficult to match in 4-color CMYK printing. Unless carefully calibrated,
monitors always show brighter, more saturated colors than can be achieved
in the printing process. Also remember that your monitor may be calibrated
differently than ours.
Part 3 >
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