Re: "Pantone Process" Inks
Re: "Pantone Process" Inks
- Subject: Re: "Pantone Process" Inks
- From: Ben Goren <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2016 14:53:52 -0700
On Mar 9, 2016, at 1:47 PM, Todd Shirley <email@hidden> wrote:
> There is no formulation of process inks that is different, correct?
Erm....
Making ink is ancient technology. Anybody who's competent enough to make noodles with marinara sauce from scratch in the kitchen should be able to make ink. And there're all sorts of cyan-ish, yellow-ish, and so on pigments that you could use to make inks that would work just fine in a CMYK process printer. With a good workflow, you could even get some great color-managed prints out of something that at first blush might seem weird.
Pantone publishes specifications for ink formulation. That publication includes thousands of inks, four of which happen to be certain variations on the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black themes.
Pantone's specification for those four is a specification shared by lots of other standards organizations. In fact, most CMYK inksets sold for general-purpose printing are going to either meet those standards or at least be within shouting distance of them; for the most part, everybody is on the same sheet of music.
But there's nothing that says that everybody actually is or must be or whatever. Again, not only are there other formulations out there, you could yourself cook up your own.
If you trust the source of the ink, information should be available from that source as to what standards, if any, the ink has been formulated to comply with. If not or if you think verification is in order, a spectrometer is the only device you need to check for yourself.
Maybe an analogy might help?
Your car calls for premium unleaded gasoline. "Premium" isn't a well-defined term. Almost every gas station sells multiple grades, with the highest octane rating being labeled as premium. In some US states, it might be 93 octane; in others, 91 octane. Some regions use different methods to calculate octane rating. And some gas stations mislabel (intentionally or otherwise) the octane rating of the gas they sell. It's up to you to determine what you actually do and don't need and what level of paranoia you feel is necessary to satisfy your purchase decisions at the pump.
Cheers,
b&
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