Spot Spaces

The Spot feature in the Color Settings dialog box lets you specify a dot gain for spot colors. As with grayscale settings, spot color settings know nothing about the actual color of the ink and paper, and they contain no information about the way the spot ink interacts with other inks. Spot settings essentially behave identically to grayscale ones.

The Spot popup menu in the Color Settings dialog box contains dot gain settings for 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 percent dot gain. When you click the More Options button in Color Settings, you can also define a Custom Dot Gain, choose a custom grayscale profile, or load the black channel of a CMYK profile. The procedure for doing any of these is identical to that for Grayscale mode. But spot inks differ widely in how they behave on paper, and the only way to know what will happen is to print a tint build.

Loading the black channel of a CMYK profile for Spot is primarily useful if you need to use black as a spot color in a CMYK image: making type, callouts, or drop shadows print with only black ink are good examples. But using tints of spot colors, which spot dot gains seem to invite, is a very uncertain process. The dot gain curve ensures that the tint you request is the one you'll get, but the only way to find out how the spot color interacts with the process inks is, unfortunately, to print it.