Since many printed matter contains spot colours such as Pantone or HKS, the question often arises whether these colours can be proofed at all. The answer is: “In most cases: Yes”. Most proof softwares and printers like the ones at proof.de print very accurate simulatios of PANTONE colors – often even more accurate than the PANTONE fandecks.
In the past, spot colours could not be mixed from the 4 printing inks (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). Today, modern proofing machines have up to 12 different printing pigments and, in addition to the classic primary colours, also have, for example, orange and green and violet as real colour pigments in the machine. Proof printers such as the Epson SureColor P9000V are therefore capable of displaying significantly larger color spaces than, for example, ISOCoatedV2. The spot color simulation in these devices is therefore is excellent. Epson points out, for example, that “98% of all Pantone colors” can be covered. This may be doubted, but a number of significantly over 90% of all Pantone colors is realistic from our point of view. But of course, fluorescenc or metallic PANTONE colours cannot be printed, as all Proof printers do not contain metallic or strongly fluorescent pigments. For for or other spot colours, the proof print works excellent today.
