Usually, we ask if the color of your print item is CMYK or PMS. For designers and packaging manufacturers, this is common sense, but for business owners who want to print logos or other branding materials, this issue can cause confusion. As a Paper Tube Manufacturer dealing with the printing industry for more than 10 years, we will talk about CMYK and PMS today.Here’s your chance to learn.
CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. These are the primary colors for printing. We have all known since childhood that yellow and blue represent green, and yellow and red represent orange. As the printing industry grew up, we knew that changing the number of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black would produce endless printing colors.
To print the above green color, it needs to be broken down into four different parts.
PMS stands for Pantone Matching System (PMS), and Pantone Matching System (PMS) is a proprietary color space used in various industries, mainly for printing. By standardizing colors, different manufacturers in different locations can refer to the Pantone system to ensure that the colors match without directly touching each other.
To print this green we use the Pantone ink for Pantone color 362 . If you have a logo made from this color including different screens (shades) of this green only one plate would be needed for the logo.
PMS is color specific and takes highly precise mixes of ink to create an exact color.We have swatch books that allows us to find the PMS value for any type of CMYK work you have done in the past.
What’s the difference between CMYK and PMS?
The main difference between CMYK and Pantone printing is the level of accuracy. The Pantone process is more consistent and able to produce colors closer in shade to the ones seen in the digital design stage. However, it is also more costly than CMYK in most cases, especially if the print job is small. With CMYK, it’s easier to bundle different jobs together than it is with Pantone. For a Pantone print job, the machine has to be prepped for each different print job. Therefore, it’s more cost effective to run large print jobs with the Pantone system rather than small ones.
The differences between CMYK and Pantone should be consider when deciding which color process to use. For consistent branding and logos, Pantone is a better choice. For print jobs where exact color isn’t a concern, CMYK is the best choice. It all depends on the nature of the print job and budgetary constraints. Contact us to find out which option is best for you.