Among design, graphics and color, the latter is the most difficult to show accurately. This is because color perception can be affected by lots of factors. First, it depends on the structure of a person’s eye. The viewer may be colorblind. Colorblindedness may vary. It can be either slight or acute. Another factor is the impact of one color to another when placed side by side. This can happen either through reflection or visual illusion. How do this happen? To make a clear notion, you can practice this: hold a bright red colored paper or object right next to a white piece of paper. Do this near a sunny window. As you can observe, the paper turns into a pastel color of red which is pink.

With regards to printing services, colors vary. Colors may not match especially if you use different printing services, some may use CMYK while others prefer Pantone colors. Colors may also vary between presses. It depends on the setup or calibration used. Thus, if your printed materials were printed on different machines or at different interval, the appearance may vary.

To minimize inaccuracies and misrepresentations, you can use or ask your printer to use the Pantone Matching System (PMS) colors. With this printing process, the exact colors of your logo or graphics can be had. You can also select from a wide array of paper choices that have different textures and colors. However, this process is more expensive compared to the 4 Color Printing and is limited up to three colors only.

4 Color Printing otherwise known as full-color printing or process color printing uses CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) inks in printing. They are printed as tiny dots called screen or line screen. These dots create a miniature rainbow of colors. If your printing job needs a wide range of colors like photograhy, you can use 4 Color Printing. One of the latter’s drawback though is that it is also limited in a way that it cannot produce metallics and very bright colors.

If you want to produce ‘match proofs’ of your colors and to ensure that the colors are close to each other, compare first the colors of 4 Color Printing and Pantone. There are also books that show how Pantone colors will translate to CMYK. These books can help you translate Pantone colors into CMYK so that your print jobs can be had in the most economical way.

Colors can capture the rage of an individual’s zeal and let him get lost in it. Be sure to keep your colors teasing and haunting!