Getting vibrant colors
Hi I just recently purchased a pantone color (magenta) to letterpress a job. Once I started printing the color was more of a light pink-magenta. Does anyone know how I can get the color being printed as close to the color in the swatch book as possible. I was printing small type so no large areas. Next time should I order one color darker from the pantone book? Thanks
Is there anyone who can help me with this please !!!
It may well be that your ink is the correct color but if the type is indeed small, it is overpowered by the white paper around it. Throw in something with a larger surface image and print a couple copies to check and see if the ink color is indeed light or if it is merely an illusion due to the light face type.
It is amazing how easily the eye can be fooled by surrounding space colors. The same ink will look extremely light when surrounded by a black reverse, for instance.
You may have to deepen the magenta color with a darker color to give the effect you want to achieve.
Thank you when i print a larger surface (though the type is not small nor thin) the color is still lighter than in the swatch book almost can see the paper underneath it and I hate to have to ink twice in order to get the right color. but will try to darken it a little hope that would help. do you think it would be smarter to just go ahead and get a shade darker color.
You didn’t by any chance, by process color magenta. Process colors are thinner in body than regular PMS colors to allow translucence for the other four colors. Many offset shops keep the process black and job black seperate for this reason.
Mike from Montanna….. you asked the same question that I was about to ask. It sounds like X2 is using a transparent base ink to me.
My recommendation is to always use opaque inks unless you actually need to make a third color by overlapping. Opaque inks are far less dependent on ink-layer density to achieve a consistent color, and are thus easier to work with on smaller letterpresses.