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    Spot Color Overview:

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Spot Colors were invented for the world of lithographic printing, where ink was specially mixed to create specific colors.  If you print with a spot color on a litho press, you are actually putting a special color of ink on the printing press to produce that very precise color.  However, spot colors are expensive.  For this reason, most printing is done using a combination of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black ink on a four color press.  Those four colors in combination produce the vast array of color you see on a printed page.  You would think that if you mixed those four colors just right, you could reproduce any spot color.  This is true for some spot colors - but not all of them.  The majority of spot colors are too dense or bright to reproduce with CMYK inks.  Other spot colors have special properties, for example metalic - looking colors.