For many decades, the process colour printing gamut (CMYK) has been prevailing as an industry standard to reproduce multicolour halftone images in print. Though this system was a proven one, it had the limitation of not being able to reproduce a wider range of colours, therefore, giving way to special colours by PANTONE, who developed an exhaustive library of special colours that could be achieved in print.
The objective of Pantone special colour shades was to use specific colour shades to highlight reproduction of logos and house colours, to produce a particular impact on the consumer’s mind that identifies the product as a genuine brand. The flip side to the use of pantone shades was the additional costs incurred in using special inks for print in addition to the process colours.
As printing revolutionized, attention was placed on development of Extended / Expanded Colour Gamut (ECG), to reproduce special colours by combining Red, Green & Blue to the standard process colour (CMYK). This development lead to better print results that varied depending on the specifications of colours used in ECG, which was the key difference as against using Pantone colours in print.
The important aspect of ECG required the ability to provide separation files to reproduce the images and shades effectively and enhancing the resolution of images. This enabled digital proofing to use these separation files to show results achievable in final print. At the same time, it made it difficult for other competitors to replicate these images in others forms of print.
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