Spot color Spot color In offset printing, a spot color or solid color is any color generated by an ink (pure or mixed) that is printed using a "single run", whereas a process color is produced by printing a series of dots of different colors. The widespread offset-printing process is composed of the four spot colors cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black) commonly referred to as CMYK. More advanced processes involve the use of six spot colors (hexachromatic process), which add orange and green to the process (termed CMYKOG). The two additional spot colors are added to compensate for the ineffective reproduction
Shades of magenta a single wavelength. Humans, being trichromats, can only see as far as 380 nanometers into the spectrum, i.e., as far as violet. The hue magenta is the complement of green: magenta pigments absorb green light, thus magenta and green are opposite colors. Before "printer's magenta" was invented in the 1890s for CMYK printing, and "electric magenta" was invented in the 1980s for computer displays, these two artificially engineered colors were preceded by the color displayed at right, which is the color originally called "magenta" made from coal tar dyes in the year 1859. Besides being called original magenta, magenta dye