Pantone colours are used when creating artwork for screen printing or offset printing. Spot colours, or PANTONE colours, are created with user-defined colours and are typically used when CMYK colours cannot be used to create a specific shade or for consistency. The practical application of the CMY colour model in printing is, therefore, the 4-colour CMYK process. To achieve purer blacks and shades of grey, printers do this by adding black ink, denoted as K. True black cannot be produced by mixing inks due to imperfections in the inks and other limitations.
In practice, though, CMY is usually not the only colour to use. Typically, the CMYK colour model is used for Offset printing and Digital printing. The CMY model is a subtractive model that is made up of three colours cyan, magenta, and yellow. The colour gamut for the RGB model is quite large in comparison to CMYK, so it is the preferred colour model when images are being created for the web, sublimation printing, or output to a digital device such as in web graphics. The RGB colour model is an additive colour model.
Before starting a discussion on using the Roland colour palettes, it might be best to review a few of the colour models.Ĭommon colour models include RGB, CMYK, and Pantone.
