Adobe Illustrator - Color and Ink

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
March 3, 2024
2 replies
997 views

I've recently started a design course using Adobe Illustrator and I'm a little confused on the ink/color concept. The requirements for our first project requires us to use "ink (spot) not color" in our design. I am basically clueless and have no idea if there is a difference between the two, or what that even means. If someone can explain it, I would greatly appreciate it. I've tried looking up online but the only results I get are colors, spot colors, and color processes.

Draw and design

This topic has been closed for replies.

B

Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

I don't think "ink not color" is good terminology. Ink has color, even if that color is black. So I'm sure that has to be confusing for students. There are process colors and spot colors. Or call them process inks or spot inks. But process and spot are the important terms.

How is the finished result of the project supposed to look? Will the image or graphics be a single monochrome color or tints of that color? Duotone is also popular (often black ink paired with a bright spot color).

As Monika said, there are several different kinds of spot color inks. In some production situations, such as large format printing, custom spot colors can be used to define white ink or define a cutting path to tell a plotter where to cut around printed graphics on vinyl. Spot colors should be applied to artwork objects only when it makes sense to do so.

Q

QandQAuthor

Known Participant

Yes, sorry, I forgot to mention that one of the requirements was to have it all done in one ink. We can use shades, gradients, etc. The format is in half-letter but there was no specification on whether to use CMYK or RGB. But because we aren't required to print it out, I'm assuming they want it in RGB mode. I was just really thrown off by the "ink (spot) not color) phrase.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

RGB is color composed by light, certainly not ink.

I would go for a CMYK document with a single color.

Could be one out of the Color Books that you can open from the Swatches panel.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

There are process colors in which the color is mixed out of the base colors for the process: cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks for CMYK mode in print. And red, green and blue lights for RGB when presenting on a screen. https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/spot-vs-process-color.html#:~:text=Process%20color%20uses%20four%20ink,for%20a%20job%20to%20four.

And then in printing, you can also mix the color out of inks before filling it into the printing machine. Those are spot colors. Spot colors are also used for varnish and several other markings in printing. There are several systems of communicating spot colors, Pantone is one of them, but not the only one.

In Illustrator in order to prepare the file correctly, you have to carefully set up the swatches according to your needs. Printing with spot colors can be more expensive, but you can achieve neon or metallic and several colors that can't be done with process colors.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded