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 How To Print Hardcover Books

CMYK Colour Charts and Values

This is the place to discover how printed colour works, what affects
colour and how to get the look you want.

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 Reading Colour Charts
Some colours are more challenging to reproduce than others. The charts
below contain a series of CMYK colours considered reliable for offset
printing.

While we cannot offer exact colour matching, we can recommend these

options for your designs. Using these charts will help you achieve greater
consistency and accuracy in colour reproduction.

We displayed a base colour on the left of each row. As you progress to

the right, the colour values gradually decrease. The rows lower in each
chart shows secondary colours.

Please note your monitor settings may affect what you see on your screen
compared to your physical prints. The settings on inkjet or laser printers
may also produce varying results.

NOTE: This applies to every CMYK colour. Be careful when using black
to make the colours darker. It can easily make your colours appear
muddy.

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 CMYK Black
We make Standard Black (the K in CMYK) from shades of grey. How
intense the black colour looks in print is based on density, on a scale of 1
to 100.

Rich black is created by blending all the CMYK colours, resulting in a

richer, more saturated tone. Do not over-saturate the paper by setting all
colours to 100 maximum.

Black only and Rich Black

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 CMYK Reds
Red can often appear orange or rusty when printing. When this happens,
you need to look at your levels of magenta and yellow. If your red looks
too pinkish, you have mixed in too much magenta. But if you see a more
orange tinge, the yellow colour value is too high.

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 CMYK Oranges and Browns
Creating a vibrant, bright orange is easy: combine two parts yellow and
one part magenta (0-50-100-0).

Changing the colour balance will produce mossy greens, a rich rust colour,
or earthy browns.

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 CMYK Yellows and Greens
Cyan and yellow will produce a green colour. Set the values to equal parts
and make them dense for vibrant results. As for yellow, be careful when
making it darker. It can become easily more of a sage or mustard colour.
For a much denser mixture, it can become more orange or green.

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 CMYK Blues
In CMYK, blue is one of the most challenging colours to reproduce
accurately. We suggest you use even and balanced mixtures, like 100-50-
0-0. Otherwise, the result will be a purple or green colour.

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 CMYK Purples
Regal purple tones are CMYK friendly. A 3:2 magenta to cyan ratio is an
excellent place to start (79-100-0-0).

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 CMYK Pinks
Pinks in CMYK printing are all about the magenta. For stand out pink
colours - the magenta levels should be high, and the yellow, cyan, and
black low. If you add too much yellow, you will get more red hues, but
with too much cyan, it will turn purple.

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 CMYK Golds
We cannot provide a realistic metallic gold finish in CMYK printing, but
we can produce a flat or NMM (non-metallic metal) representation of
gold. See right for some examples.

If you want a close representation of a metallic finish, you will need to

use a metallic Pantone spot ink for your design. Foils are also available for
some products.

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 CMYK Silvers
Similar to CMYK golds, you cannot also obtain a metallic silver finish in
CMYK printing. Flat or NMM (non-metallic metal) colours are possible, and
you can use a metallic Pantone spot ink for your design or foiling.

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 CMYK Bright Colours
Want your colours to pop off the page? Although CMYK can never quite
reach the backlit-brilliance of RGB colours, the colour combinations below
will ensure the most vivid results for your printed products.

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 Seeing (and feeling) is believing

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