Before you begin designing a publication for commercial printing, you'll want to discuss with your printer whether to use process color, also known as CMYK color, or spot color. Microsoft Publisher supports process- and spot-color printing, and provides all the tools your commercial printing service needs to prepare your color publication for printing. After you make a decision about color, you can design your publication for the type of color printing you've chosen.
Choosing process- and spot-color printing In most cases, your decision to use process color, spot color, or a combination of spot and process color will be based on the printing issues that you discuss with someone from a commercial printing service. These issues include the following:
The number or range of colors that will best suit your publication
Spot color printing uses variations, or percentages, of black and one or more colors. Spot colors are typically used in publications to:
Spot color is always a good choice when color graphics serve as an accent, rather than as the focus or subject, of your publication.
Process-color (CMYK) printing, which can reproduce all colors on the printed page, is often used when a publication:
Process color might be used, for example, in a brochure that focused on illustrating a product with detailed artwork and photographs.
The cost of producing the publication
Typically, a process-color publication is more expensive to produce than a spot-color publication. Every color in a process color job must be created on a separate color plate, and the cost per publication increases if you are printing only a small number of publications.
Spot color costs have a wide range, but they are flexible. For example, a printer can create screen tints of spot colors, rather than separate plates, and thus vary the colors without increasing printing costs.
The cost of producing a publication also depends on the type of paper used for printing, the complexity of the publication's graphics, and on the number of publications that will be produced.