Photoshop® CS3 Channels and Masks Bible

Chapter 10. Applying Spot Color

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Working with Spot Color

• Viewing spot colors

• Creating knockouts and traps

• Printing spot colors

Let's say that your job is to produce 1,000 Christmas brochures printed in red and green ink. To print this job on an inkjet printer is ineffi-cientbecause of the cost of ink cartridges that mix CMYK process colors to produce the red and green on the brochure. Two color jobs printed in any substantial quantity are most often printed on offset printing presses that impress spot colors onto paper.

As with duotones, spot colors use premixed inks. Spot colors are used for printing one, two, and three color jobs where full color is not required or not affordable. Spot colors are also used when a very specific color is required or the color is outside the range of the CMYK gamut because spot color can extend the range CMYK to bump a particular color or to build a vibrant solid color. In Photoshop, spot colors are channel-based. Because they are often applied as solid colors they need to be overlapped or trapped when two or more spot colors butt up against each other. This chapter covers all you need know to work with spot colors: how to choose them, how to view them, and how to prepare them for printing.

Working with Spot Color Channels

Spot colors are supported by all the color modes except Bitmap, yet they are independent and do not appear as part of the composite channel. Spot Color channels exist only in the Channels palette. They are also independent ...