Spot color definitionsSpot colors realize a consistent color and are often used in logos and house style colors. The printer provides a spot color editor and a set of pre-defined spot color libraries, such as PANTONE libraries and HKS libraries. The library of custom spot colors contains spot colors that users have created in the Settings Editor or on the control panel.
Custom spot color libraryIf a source document contains a spot color definition, the printer needs to know how to print that particular color. A spot color is the combination of a spot color name, the color value, and a tint value. The device-independent spot color definition uses a CIELAB value (Lab value). When you create a spot color for a specific media family you use a CMYK value.
You can add more CMYK color values to a spot color definition, for other media families that print the spot color.
When you want to add a spot color that has the exact color value of a sample, for example in an offset print, you measure the spot color with the i1Pro3 spectrophotometer. The measured Lab values define the new spot color.
When you add or edit a spot color definition, you can print a patch chart to check how the set CMYK values and small variations on these values appear on media. The printed colors and the CMYK values of the patches give the best visual match to fine-tune the spot color for the given media family.
The printer provides pre-defined spot color libraries, such as PANTONE libraries and HKS libraries.
Spot color libraries in the Settings EditorThe Settings Editor can store three types of spot color libraries:
Pre-defined spot color libraries, with pre-defined spot color definitions.
Custom spot color libraries, with spot color definitions that have been created on the control panel or in the Settings Editor.
Imported spot color libraries (Named color profiles), with spot color definitions stored in an ICC profile.
In the Settings Editor you can import named spot color profiles and export spot color libraries that were imported as named spot color libraries.
Custom spot color libraryA named color profile is an ICC profile that contains a list of spot colors names with color values (Lab or XYZ). When you import a named color profile, the named color profile is added as an imported spot color library. A named color profile has a standardized file format defined by the ICC (International Color Consortium).