1a – What are PMS Colors?
PMS or Pantone Matching System is a specific brand of inks used for color matching. The process of using PMS colors in generally know as Spot Color printing and are a way of printing without the use of 4 Color Process Inks (CMYK – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black).
1b – Why use PMS Colors?
The Pantone Matching System is the most well know ink matching system in the world. Most spot color jobs will be using this as reference and it has been an industry standard for a long time. Also, they have a larger gamma range than CMYK so colors can be more vibrant. But even more importantly, PMS colors are consistently reliable because they do not require the combination of 4 colors such as CMYK.
1c – How to Color Separate art from Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop?
We suggest following the below steps in the order presented but its good to note that some of the steps may not pertain to your art. For instance, if you don’t have gradients in your art then you can skip that step. Clicking on the links will take you to their prospective pages.
2. How to create Color Separations in Adobe Illustrator?
2a – How to Converting Strokes to Fills in Adobe Illustrator?
2b – How to Turn Active Gradients to Spot Colors in Adobe Illustrator?
2c – How to Convert an Active Drop Shadow to Spot Colors in Adobe Illustrator?
2d – How to Convert Rasterized images to a single Spot Color in Adobe Illustrator?
2e – How to Create Two Color Artwork in Adobe Illustrator?
3. How to create Color Separations in Adobe Photoshop?
3a – How to Prepare Channels for Spot colors in Adobe Photoshop?
3b – How to Separating Colors into the Spot Channels in Adobe Photoshop?
3c – How to Preview your Color Separation and Saving in Adobe Photoshop?
4. How to use Adobe Photoshop separations in Adobe Illustrator?
4a – Importing Adobe Photoshop Separations into Adobe Illustrator?
5. General Reference.
