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Welcome to the second section of our lesson; this one is called "The correct use of color"
and it's again brought to you by Printwand. Previously we learned about how to interact
with fonts in Photoshop. But now we're trying to ensure the correct use of color in our
files, whether that be using Pantone, also known as PMS colors, or a four color process
made up of the inks: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Either way, your goal should be
to use one or the other, but you don't want to use both.
So here we have our Photoshop file. We have two seemingly identical pieces of artwork.
When we lay one on top of the other we can see that there doesn't seem to be any difference
between the two. Ok, so let's go up to our "Layers Pallet," and we want to double click
on the "Layer Style" of one of our layers. And then we're going to head down to the "Color
Overlay," and we'll just click on this colored square right here.
So we see that this is a PMS or Pantone color. This means that it's one color when it's printed.
It only uses one ink. Ok, let's close this and then look at the next piece of art. We'll
head back over to our "Layers Pallet" and we want to double click again on the "Layer
Style" of the next layer. And we'll head down to the "Color Overlay," and again click on
this square.
Now notice here that this one is made up of a four color process. It uses four inks, like
we mentioned before cyan, magenta, yellow and black. So this is just one more thing
to keep in mind when we're setting up our documents. It's not that one is right and
one is wrong, it's just one more thing to be aware of with our artwork. And as you can
see, it can be easy for the colors to be mistaken for each other.
Whatever process that we have indicated to our printers, whether that be PMS or four
color, that's how our document should be set up, with one or the other. Another habit to
get into would be always trying to send original files, in this case Photoshop, to our printers.
It just makes things easier for them if they have to make changes at some point in the
process.
So this finishes up our lesson on "The correct use of color" in our Photoshop files. Our
next section will discuss how to "Achieve a multi-color look in a one color document."
Make sure to check back often to Printwand for more video lessons as well as other articles
to help you with your marketing and promotional needs.