Page 568 - Xara Designer Pro X17

568 Printing

Imagesetting

Spot colors
Normally four colors are used when printing, cyan, magenta, yellow and black (key)
commonly known as CMYK. But it’s also possible to produce spot colors. Spot colors are
not normally printed using the CMYK inks, and are instead additional inks.

Spot colors have two uses:
• Many simple jobs use only two or three ink colors (for example a simple newsletter
with black text and blue headings). Creating a spot color for each ink color can make
the job cheaper to print.
• Some complex jobs require either PANTONE COLOR BRIDGE colors or special inks
that cannot be reproduced in CMYK such as gold or silver. These special colors
require spot colors.

See chapter PANTONE colors (on page 206) for more on PANTONE COLOR BRIDGE.

Note: As each spot color is an additional ink and printing plate, it does increase printing
costs.

Spot colors appear as circles on the COLOR LINE and COLOR Gallery.
Spot colors are always Named colors.

Technical notes on color separations:

• Tints based on a spot color output on that spot separation. So if you require a lighter
shade of a spot color, define the color as a Tint (on page 203) of the spot color.
• Shades and linked colors based on a spot color output on the CMYK separations.
• Objects with transparency applied always output on the CMYK separations, not to the
spot separation.

For more information on how spot colors are affected by transparencies, fills and blends
see "Transparency and Color Separations" later in the chapter.

On screen printer plate previews
The process of printing requires that your artwork is separated into CMYK print colors. It
can sometimes be useful to see and understand exactly what inks are printed on each
printer plate, especially if using spot colors. Xara Designer Pro X can show a simulation
of the CMYK separation process on screen, showing a preview of each printer ink color
separation. Normally this would be the four CMYK colors, but if you use spot colors you
can preview these as well.

To preview any required plate or ink color, select "WINDOW" > "SHOW PRINTER COLORS"
and the required ink color.