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jgh3658
Participant
November 8, 2011
Question

Best Pantone Metallic gold colour?

  • November 8, 2011
  • 7 replies
  • 234083 views

Hello all

Apologies for basic question.

I'm making some branding material, and the colour scheme is a metallic gold on a royal blue. I was just wondering the best way to achieve a good metallic gold effect when printing. I've done all the design, and am in the process of making it all print ready. The 'gold' colour I use for the digital previews is just a CKMY mix (38 42 84 12) with obviously no real relevance to actual printed gold - just looks good on the screen. I do Edit Colours - 3 Colour Job (royal blue, metallic gold, white), and the from the Pantone Metallic Coated swatch, Illustrator gives me 8383 C. Is this any good? I did a google search and it's not really mentioned... I also can't find a convention on what gold IS good to use. As the background is a dark blue, some light metallic gold would be best.

Additionally, I read the metallics are opaque. Thus, do I need to make a copy of any object that's in gold, make it white, and then underlay the gold object with it, so the printer is printing gold on white, rather than gold on blue? I may just do it anyway, as it's no effort. Good to know though...

And if anyone's feeling especially helpful, I was just wondering why the maximum output on AI is 300dpi, whereas on PS one can enter any value that one chooses? Is 300dpi absolutely fine for all print jobs? When I make photo-based stuff in PS, I use 600dpi...

Thanks so much for any help.

marko

    7 replies

    Ares Hovhannesyan
    Community Expert
    Ares HovhannesyanCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 20, 2019

    We have working now on reconstruction of old Armenians Ornaments and we use Ai Pantone gold.  For achieving real gold effect or desktop and print we are using Ai raster Effects. Here is an example.

      W
      Community Expert
      Warren Heaton10841144Community Expert
      Community Expert
      July 20, 2019

      Ideally one would use a Pantone swatch book (not more than a few years old because they fade over time) to select Pantone colors.

      If you don’t own one for the color type that you‘re considering, the service bureau running the print job should have one on hand that you can look at.

      meganchi
      meganchi
      Legend
      July 19, 2019

      Please do not use metallic inks for branding. Branding color means a large family of products need to have the same "look". I can tell you that some of our print facilities use EB inks (electron beam) inks, and they cannot print metallic inks because the metal in the ink formulation can spark on press during the EB cure (creating a fire hazard).

      Your best bet is to choose a regular coated Pantone color OR ask to have a custom coated color created that simulates a Pantone 871 gold ink. Then, you'd need to be able to share that swatch with any printer who needs to match their ink to it, since they would need to adjust based on the substrate being printed on.

      A
      Anonymous
      July 19, 2019

      A few days back I was told by a top printer what the best CMYK breakdown for gold is. and I'am still using since then.

      Color values for Pantone CMYK Metallic Gold

      1. RGB 132 117 78
      2. HEX/HTML #84754E
      3. CMYK 0 17 55 50

      Usually designers use the different version of Pantone Metallic from the Pantone Formula Guide which is priinted on normal paper and gives a dull glow gold color. This gold color is only for using in paper printing process which I think you havee got your self confused with. The original metallic look and feel is found only in the new 2019 edition of the Pantone Metallic Guide which actually has colors coated on metallic sheets and theen combined to form a fan guide. When the colors are taken from this guide you will get true natural metallic colors and not face the confusion of PPI. The PPI problem only exists when direct colors are taken from Pantone paper guides which are meant for thee graphiics industry and not for true metallics or embroideries.

        paulgeudon
        paulgeudon
        Participant
        January 16, 2017

        Many years ago I was told by a top printer what the best CMYK breakdown for gold is... and I've always used it since.

        C: 30  M: 40  Y: 70  K: 0

        Works well.

          Monika Gause
          Community Expert
          Monika GauseCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          January 16, 2017

          paulgeudon schrieb:

          Many years ago I was told by a top printer what the best CMYK breakdown for gold is... and I've always used it since.

          C: 30 M: 40 Y: 70 K: 0

          Works well.

          You would have to add in which country, which process, printing technique and which paper.

            H
            HUNA MA NI KAI
            Participant
            January 30, 2016

            Pantone Gold 871 C is popular on Google Images search.

            Steve Fairbairn
            Steve Fairbairn
            Inspiring
            November 9, 2011

            Pantone 871 is the brassiest of the metallic colours.

            BUT ... Don't use gold or metallic colours for branding. It can get you into deep spaghetti.

            The thing is that you never know beforehand where or how branding material is going to be used.

            For all you know it might end up on the side of an aeroplane. (Been there.)

            My advice is to select colours that can be matched in all common colour systems; RGB, CMYK, Pantone, RAL, Toyo, Self-adhesive foil etc. etc.

            O.k., you may want to make a metallic version for special purposes, but generally keep to easily matched colours for your standard version. You may feel it cramps your style a bit but in the long run it's worth it.

              G
              gaekstrom17317097
              Participant
              September 22, 2020

              What are the rules/guidelines for printing metallic colors on sauce labels? Any pros and cons? 🙂

              Jacob Bugge
              Community Expert
              Jacob BuggeCommunity Expert
              Community Expert
              November 8, 2011

              Marko,

              The CMYK value you mention is quite far from anything I would suggest.

              You may have a look at the colours, especially the triangle with alloys, here.

              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold

              There is no 300 PPI limit in Illy, and resolution is only relevant for raster effects/export to raster formats, so please elaborate.

              J
              jgh3658Author
              Participant
              November 8, 2011

              Hi Jacob

              I was really just after which Pantone Metallic coated colour is best, in practice, since I guess the conversion from CKMY to Pantone Metallic in Illy isn't without it's problems.

              That resolution question was just referring to when I create a new doc, I have those 3 options (75, 150, 300dpi), and I know they're for raster effects, but what about the rest of the document? How are the resolution of the vectors set?

              Thanks so much

              jack

              Jacob Bugge
              Community Expert
              Jacob BuggeCommunity Expert
              Community Expert
              November 8, 2011

              Jack,

              Can you post an image of the options?

              A few other questions (which may be answered by the image):

              No Other/Custom option?

              Lowest setting 75, not 72?

              DPI, not PPI?

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