Abstract

Packaging plays an important role in the modern world. It helps to preserve, protect, dispense, communicate and sell a product. Printing and color are key components of the communication and selling functions. Printing can broadly be classified into two categories on the basis combination of inks being used – process and spot color printing. Process color printing involves use of combinations of process colors – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). Expanded gamut printing is a special case of process printing where additional colors, typically orange, green and violet, are used to achieve a larger color gamut. Spot color printing uses specially formulated inks that are designed to achieve a particular color appearance on a given substrate. The brand colors as commonly printed as spot colors. Different brands use characteristic colors that the consumers can relate to their products and brand identity e.g. a coca cola red or a Pepsi blue. Color can be defined using colorimetric coordinates in a 3-Dimensional (3D) CIELAB space. The L* represents lightness or darkness, a* stands for redness or greenness and b* indicates the yellowness or blueness of a color. These colorimetric coordinates can also be represented in CIELCH space using L*C*ho values, where C* is the chromaticity and ho represents the hue angle of a color. The Studies have suggested a higher visual sensitivity towards hue as compared to saturation and lightness (Danilova & Mollon, 2016) (Durmus & Davis, 2019).

The study was limited to six spot colors on a single paperboard packaging substrate. The study was conducted with water-based inks as these are common for paperboard packaging. Pantone-Live dependent library Flexo Water-Based Coated Paper (FWCP) was used as a digital reference. Other software solutions, although available, were not evaluated under this study. The substrate was chosen based on substrate in the Pantone-Live FWCP library.