What is CMYK Printing? — What can you do if you have strict requirement for colors?

As a packaging manufacturer, one of the most frequent questions we’ve been asking is: What’s CMYK Printing? What’s is full-color printing and offset printing? What should I do when I need my printed box to have the exact color that I was expecting?

Undoubtedly, it does sound like several question marks wandering around you, not just one question. Though it’s the same question when it comes to paper printing.

Why there is a slight or dramatic color difference between customers’ design artwork and the actual printed box? Especially if you are expecting a “neon” light shining colors and get confused when you get a much darker box on hand.

In Printing & packaging industry, there is a term called “CMYK Printing”. Also known as four-color printing and full-color printing. CMYK comes from cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, is majorly used in printing to identify itself from Pantone color printing, or let’s say, “Specific color Printing”. This word is rarely known by most graphic designers, not mentioning all other customers that never get involved in designing and printing.

To make it simple, we can interpret it into a similar explanation as RGB.  RGB is an expression for color divisions on a computer screen while CMYK on the printing system. On Printpalance.com there is a detailed explanation for CMYK and how it comes from CMY to nowadays CMYK.

CMY will cover most lighter color ranges quite easily, compared to using RGB. However, CMY by itself can’t create very deep dark colors like “true black,” so black (designated “K” for “key color”) is added. This gives CMY a much wider range of colors compared to just RGB.

Therefore, as a brand owner, when you are planning design for your packaging box, do be reminded that the colors on your computer screen might have much difference when it comes to the printed box. Here comes the question, How to make sure that the color on your paper packaging will be exactly you are expecting and the same as your design graphic?

Method One: Convert the design into CMYK Printing when designing.

Here is a short video made by Printngpalance:

By this, you would have a much closer printed color as your artwork.

However, there will still be a slight color difference that might be bothering some designer that has extremely strict requirement on colors and visions. On most occasions, dark or “neutral colors” would have less difference compared to light and bright colors.

Method Two: Use Pantone Color.

Some customers have the highest demand for colors and have very strict color settings for their products and brands, including the packaging box.

In such cases, We would suggest using Panton printing instead of CMYK Printing

Simply put, using Pantone colors for your design is like go shopping in retail stores. You can vision the real color instead of viewing them “online” (RGB colors)

In these options, we could make sure the color will be the same as the Pantone color number you appointed.

Though, the price for Pantone printing is relatively higher compared to normal CMYK Printing. But this is never a matter for those brands that required a higher packaging box.