"Expensive" Pantone colours?

[monq]

Umm - I do apologise if I seem to be taking most of the top area of this very forum / just noticed that I have two more threads on top!

Just a quick question: other than the "special" Pantone colours, like Metallic or neons: is it correct to assume that the "normal" Pantone Solid Coated range has no specific issues regarding extra costs for pricing etc?

I mean: I need to select 7 Pantone colours to use in our pharmaceutical range, most of them strong colours like Process Blue, PMS 375 C (a lemony green), or 158C (bright orange). Until now I have assumed that all these were... erm... "Pantone colours", and that I do not have to worry about extra costs / manufacturing issues for specific colours selected...

Is this the case? Or do ink prices vary a lot?

Thanks

[saso777]

Your extra cost will be preparing Pantone inks in your press room and time for wash up machine when you change the Pantone colors (depends of your machine ) or when you change from process to spot colors and back again.

[monq]

Hi Saso - thanks for the info. Because my suppliers deal with quite a lot of different clients / the issue would appear independently of the Pantone I am using (they will still have to clean). My question was more on the lines of making sure that the new Pantone colours that I am using are not some sort of weird "premium" ink that might increase costs - something that it would be definitely bad.

However - I just spoke with a printers and they confirmed that even when the price of the ink does indeed vary - this variance is minimal (i.e. 1 GBP) - which kinda answers my original question.

Thanks

[saso777]

I just see some of Pantone colors you mentioned and they are usual nothing special so i don't think you will have problems with price.

[monq]

Thanks a bunch saso - that's what I assumed, but like my old boss use to say... "assumptions are the mother of all...". You can imagine the rest

[rich apollo]

of the colors you cited, only the 375C is way outside of the GRACoL gamut. Could some of the colors be run as process mixes?

[monq]

Hi Rich - I guess I am kinda clueless but - for what I have just googled, GRACoL it some sort of specification - so why being outside of this spec would have any impact on pricing? As to process - not really, my whole objective is to escape from process altogether.

My whole list of Pantones to use is here: 158C, 375C, 206C, Process Blue C, 3415C. My assumption is that there is nothing particularly nasty about none of these and I would not get a weird quotation from a supplier based on these colours only. But heck - assuuumptions!

[arossetti]

GRACoL is a standard color gamut for 4-color printing. What Rich was saying is that the majority of your colors could print fine using CMYK+ 1 pantone. Saving your printer a lot of time.

If your printer prints only in spot colors as you make it sound, A.) that is an interesting business model B.) Don't worry about GRACoL. If your printer prints in traditional 4-color printing and they also do spot colors on request you will save yourself a lot of money by using process colors instead of spot. You might not know the difference in price between a 7 color run and a 5 color run because you never given you printer the option of printing process.

[monq]

Hi arossetti - thanks for the info. I have been reading a bit about GRACoL - and I now get what rich was suggesting (not only that I could change to process colours / but also, that if I choose a Pantone that it's far away from GRACoL - I am somehow "shooting in my foot" if I ever need to use a CMYK conversion of this Pantone).

I do not have a printer - my company deals with third parties who, in their turn deal with printers. The requirements and machinery that all these suppliers / printers allow are extremely varied, as it is their level of quality (some are brilliant - someone are really bad). And when I am saying bad, I do not mean that they cannot print in what I would like to see according to our corporate guidelines - I mean that they will say yes to anything, running two unaligned passes to apply Pantones on top of CMYK, thus resulting in baaaad output.

So no - our printer does not only print in spot colours. Our current setup has CMYK + various Pantones which I am trying to reduce to something less problematic.

Not many of our suppliers has complained so far about the idea of using 3-4 Pantone colours / but most struggle to print CMYK + too many spot colours. Having said all this - thank you very much for your feedback on this / unfortunately, I cannot make a final decision that will suit all of our suppliers (for starters - we get new ones working for us regularly! ): i.e., one of our suppliers seems to be very happy of printing in 4 spot colours now, while another one has problems because they can print 3 spot colours + black...

Cheers

[Emtri]

I would like to add to rich's point and say that most mid-large sized printers (5+ colour 40 in presses) are generally going to be running jobs in CMKY (or CMKY+pantone/whatever they want to throw in the other unit) Said print companies are going to give you better pricing, when they have to do less work (not having to clean and re ink 4+ units)

So while the physical cost of the inks is going to be roughly the same, you can probably get a better price by going CMYK.

Also depending on where you are and your printers GRACoL may not be the colour gamut used SWOP is pretty common, as are a few others.

I would recommend checking out Quality In Print and learning a bit more about how colour effects print.