Put color in your ad without the full cost of four-color printing
Current discontinued spot-color printing as a regular option for advertisers in 2005 but still offers "single-color" printing at the same price.
With some graphic self-restraint, you can save a lot on color printing costs by printing in a single color — $200 instead of the usual $600 fee for four-color process (cyan, magenta, yellow and black, or CMYK).
In most cases, for reasons of press capacity, we achieve "single-color" by overlaying a combination of the same CMYK inks used in four-color. The designer sets up the artwork for four-color CMYK but uses only one hue plus black. Of course, the designer can use tints ranging from 100 percent to a light screen such as 20 percent, as well as blends with black.
To choose a hue for single-color printing, look for a set of color chips that represent certain combinations of the CMYK colors. Though process color can reproduce some 100,000 hues, it can't reproduce some of the most vivid purples, oranges and greens, which are "out of gamut" for CMYK.
When choosing a color, look at ink chips on uncoated paper. Current and most newspapers are printed on uncoated stock.
While Current has generally discontinued "spot color" reproduction, it is the only color available on some pages.
In spot-color printing, the press operators mix multiple pigments in buckets to get the desired hue rather than by overlaying the standard four inks in printing. Your designer selects from the standard Pantone PMS colors.
If you want a color ad on a page that can't handle CMYK, we may ask your designer to set up the ad for spot-color printing.
If you have questions, please contact the Ad Director, 301-270-7240, ext. 36, or the Editor, ext. 32.
Web page updated Sept. 26, 2007
