Spot Colour, Photoshop

Heres what can be done with Spot colour on photoshop.

The process, import an image, greyscale, duotone, then choose a colours from the colour library, the image below is made of just two (spot) colours, black and magenta.

Spot Colour, Illustrator

Since having the presentations at the beginning of the year, i found an interest in Spot Colour.

My explanation of a Spot Colour, also known as a Special Colour, is a non-premixed ink which unlike CMYK isn't made of tiny dots of different colours, it is instead made with just one. 

Choosing a special/spot colour you need to have a pantone booklet.

This pantone booklet allows you to see a wide range of colours each one having a name. These names often being 'Pantone' then a number and then a letter!

  

These examples are images made with Illustrator, Firstly creating the image, then to open the selection of pantone, open the swatches tab, open new swatch, then colour books, then it is here where you can choose from a selection of Spot colours. 

Print Methods

Right so because my presentation wasn't really focused on the proper thing im just going to blog some stuff on the fundamental printing methods.

1.

Monotone, So monotone is made with one colour, in this example above this colour being Cyan. The process of this being importing a photo into Photoshop, changing the image mode to Greyscale. 

Greyscale- An image made purely of one black with tints of that colour. This also being a monotone image.  

 

2.

This image is Duotone, so using two colours, moving forward with the monotone image previously this started with Cyan and then adding Magenta.

3.

Moving the image on adding another colour, this time being a green, so this is an image made purely of a cyan, a magenta and a green.

This is a quadtone image, again just adding another colour onto the tritone, this time the image is now made of 4 colours, yellow, cyan, magenta and green. 

From here the next step forward is using full colour, CMYK.

Design for Print Based Distribution

Then looking at Godskitchen a similar company to Gatecrasher, producing the same forms of design, CD covers an Promo flyers etc

CD Artwork

Promo

Design for Print Based Distribution

Firstly i looked at Gatecrasher, and the prints they design.

These being CD album artwork and promo prints.

Booklet, Album Artwork

Club Promo Prints

Design for Print Based Distribution

Unfortunately my presentation i produced was in a sense, wrong! I Kind of focused on the Design of print, not the techniques which i see as a fair assumption from reading the brief we were given but not a lot of people saw it as i did so i could just be relatively retarded! 

Anyhow in my presentation i looked at specifically two similar companies, Gatecrasher and Godskitchen, both produce CD's and flyers/leaflets promoting their clubs and what not. 

I also showed a few examples of exciting print designs,

This is an example of something that essentially is a one colour print onto cardboard stock, but i think it looks sick!  Simple and effective.

I then looked in general at CD cover artwork, this being something that is printed in large batches, from the seminar the other day i presume they are printed web sheet litho, as they are printed in large bulky amounts! However I could be wrong.

I also tend to like a lot of this kind of design, this specific example being a photoshop crafted piece of work!  Lovely stuff.