Pantone C & Pantone EC
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- jimzy
Ok, when breaking down a pantone from a solid colour to it's cmyk colour do you use the pantone c breakdown or the pantone ec breakdown?
What is the exact difference between these two? When should each be used?
- monospaced0
Ummm...I don't know about EC. Use C (coated) for use on coated papers and U (uncoated) for, you guessed it, uncoated stock. Anyways, the CMYK conversion will be incorrect 90% of the time, so it won't make a huge difference.
- inkpink0
use the pantone bridge swatches > "EC"
- Are the EC swatches in the colour bridge guide the closest matches pantone can get to a solid colour?jimzy
- and the ones to use then? is that right... confused.comjimzy
- yes the cmyk values of EC swatches are pantone's best conversion to cmyk, same as numbers in bridge bookinkpink
- BUT some colors may look whack on screen, because of these print-optimized valuesinkpink
- inkpink0
assuming you're talking in adobe apps that is.
the CMYK breakdown of a coated "C" swatch is different than a bridge "EC" swatch.
"EC" values may not look correct on screen but are pantones recommendation for process printing.
the "C" CMYK values are optimized for best visual match on screen, since the inks are mixed for spots it doesn't matter so much about process print results.
- jimzy0
Thanks inkpink. That's what i've always thought, and how i've worked but was getting seriously confused there.
And for breaking down a colour to its closest RGB values then what do you generally use?
- inkpink0
no prob, just make sure you use EC swatches for process jobs only as they will not separate as spot (unless you go in and edit the swatch).
i don't work in rgb much, usually use the numbers in bridge books to do conversions manually.
but if want a swatch to convert into rgb, the C colors would probably be more accurate because the cmyk values are not tweaked for process and closer to visual appearance.
but the rgb still won't match recommended bridge values.