Helpful Tips - Color Printing

We print book covers in four-color process and spot-color printing. Process printing uses the following primary colors—cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK)—to simulate full-color images. To print the image, we create a piece of film for each of the four colors, as well as four corresponding press plates.

Images purchased from stock photo houses, generated by digital cameras, or scanned on your desktop scanners may be in RGB format—a combination of three primary colors: red, green and blue. RGB is not compatible with our four-color printing process.

You should convert those images from RGB to CMYK format. To do this, view the image in a photo program like Adobe Photoshop and resave it as CMYK. When you convert an image from RGB to CMYK, you may notice a color shift on the image. This is an expected result, which cannot be avoided.

In addition to process-color, we also print using spot colors, as defined by the Pantone Matching System (PMS). Pantone-brand swatch books show several thousand standardized colors identified by number. To learn more about the Pantone system and products, visit their website at www.pantone.com.

Note: When defining spot colors, do not depend on the monitor to represent accurate color. You also cannot rely on the color reflected in laser/ink jet printouts. Choose Pantone colors based on what you see in the Pantone swatch book.