Spot Colors

 Top Previous Topic Next Topic  Print this topic

A spot color is a specially mixed ink used in printing. Spot color inks come in a rainbow of colors, including some specialty inks such as metallic and fluorescent. Unlike CMYK or process color, which create colors by laying down layers of just 4 specific inks, spot colors are pre-mixed and one ink is used for each color in the publication.

Using an Ecrion specific extension, it is possible to declare and use spot colors in XF Rendering Server 2013. This can be done by using the spot-color function.

 

Usage:

 

       

       spot-color(colorName,tint,rgb(colorSubstituteRed,colorSubstituteGreen,colorSubstituteBlue))

       

       spot-color(colorName,tint,cmyk(colorSubstituteCyan,colorSubstituteMagenta,colorSubstituteYellow,colorSubstituteBlack))

 

 

Key observations:

 

·The first parameter is the name of the color. For PDF file format, the spot color can be specified by using the Pantone standard.

  The available names for Pantone spot colors are listed in C:\Program Files\Ecrion\XF Ultrascale 2013 vX.X.X\Resources\SpotColors.txt file.

·The second parameter is a number representing the spot color's tint.
·The third attribute represents the color substitute for formats different than PDF, which can be either an RGB or a CMYK color.

 

 

Example of usage:

 

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" xmlns:xf="http://www.ecrion.com/xf/1.0" xmlns:xc="http://www.ecrion.com/2008/xc" xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">

       <fo:layout-master-set>

               <fo:simple-page-master master-name="Letter Page" page-width="8.500in" page-height="11.000in">

                       <fo:region-body region-name="xsl-region-body" margin="0.700in" />

                       <fo:region-before region-name="xsl-region-before" display-align="after" extent="0.700in"/>

                       <fo:region-after region-name="xsl-region-after" display-align="before" extent="0.700in"/>

                       <fo:region-start region-name="xsl-region-start" extent="0.700in"/>

                       <fo:region-end region-name="xsl-region-end" extent="0.700in"/>

               </fo:simple-page-master>

       </fo:layout-master-set>

       <fo:page-sequence master-reference="Letter Page">

               <fo:static-content flow-name="xsl-region-before" font-size="12pt" font-family="Times">

                       <fo:block>&#x00A0;</fo:block>

               </fo:static-content>

               <fo:static-content flow-name="xsl-region-after" font-size="12pt" font-family="Times">

                       <fo:block>&#x00A0;</fo:block>

               </fo:static-content>

               <fo:static-content flow-name="xsl-region-start" font-size="12pt" font-family="Times">

                       <fo:block>&#x00A0;</fo:block>

               </fo:static-content>

               <fo:static-content flow-name="xsl-region-end" font-size="12pt" font-family="Times">

                       <fo:block>&#x00A0;</fo:block>

               </fo:static-content>

               <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body" font-family="Times" font-size="12pt" font-weight="bold">

                       <fo:block color="spot-color(PANTONE 145, 5, cmyk(0,47,100,8))">Spot color</fo:block>

               </fo:flow>

       </fo:page-sequence>

</fo:root>

 

 

The text color for a PDF output will be Pantone 145 and for other formats will be cmyk(0,47,100,8).

 

Output: