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Getting started using the Spot Matching System (SMS)

Regardless if you are a Brand Owner or a Designer, - if you like the idea of using actual colours that look the same in print, online and on TV, we have prepared this section to get you started. We are happy to answer any questions you may have while you are getting started, so don't be shy to send us any questions you may have to sms@spot-nordic.com.  

We realize that SMS is new territory which requires a new mindset, when it comes to defining and working with colours.

SMS colours are obviously especially well suited for logo design and consequently for brand design due to the fact that all SMS colours are by default available for process printing on paper, the Internet (websites, social media, including video) and Television. Roughly 80-90% of all jobs printed worldwide are printed using some type of icc based process printing (not spot colour printing).

This means that by default SMS colours cover between 80% and 100% of all mainstream media outlets where brand colours typically need to be displayed in the 21st Century.

Our 1.738 SMS Standard colours cover all mainstream/normal media, - web, TV and normal process printing (CMYK offset printing or digital printing) on white Coated and Uncoated paper. Due to the slightly brownish/grayish colour of typical paper used for newspaper printing standard SMS colours will adapt that slightly brownish/grayish shade and will thus not look exactly the same, although reasonably correct.

Our 1.738 SMS ECO colours however are made for off-white paper and thus it is safe to say that if newspaper printing and/or printing on recycled, off-white paper is an important part of your marketing you should consider SMS ECO colours which cover 100% of all typical visual media, newspaper printing as well as printing on any coated or uncoated paper, web and TV.

Companies that are especially environmentally focused, should for sure consider using our ECO colours.

Our 1.738 SMS MAX colours cannot be correctly reproduced on uncoated paper. They are simply made for CMYK printing on white, coated paper (for instance for packaging), web and TV.
The strength of this version of SMS is that the full strength colours especially are more vibrant than the colours of the Standard and ECO versions, - which can be useful for packaging applications.

In addition, it is important for Brand Owners to be aware of new technology in advertising, marketing and sales, such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). SMS colours are AR and VR Ready, - which means that if, for instance, you create a digital layer on top of a printed item, it will be extremely hard for you to see where the printed SMS colour ends and the digital SMS colour begins - almost like looking through a clear glass window.

SMS colours are also ready for the Metaverse.

To cover all bases, we have prepared a simple guide to help designers getting started designing with SMS colours and at the end of this manual, there are instructions on how to convert the chosen SMS colours to Pantone spot colours, - in case Pantone spot colours are needed for printing. This guide can be downloaded here.

Before you begin, please familiarize yourself with which icc profiles are appropriate for each version of our SMS colours.

Press this link to download the spec sheet / overview of the SMS colour palettes.

The easiest way to get started using SMS colours consists of the following steps:

1. Order the SMS labelled sRGB colour patches for brand design (P20, P20e or P20x) - or REC 0709/2020 for video.

Each colour palette contains either 869 (v4) or 1.738 (v5) SMS colours. The v4 palette is delivered both in ASE and PDF format, while v5 is only delivered in PDF format.  Make sure to order the colour palette you want to use - either Standard, ECO (e) or MAX (x) - or all of them in either sRGB or REC format.

The cost pr. P20 v4 is €60 Euros and the cost for v5 is 90 Euros.

You can either order the file, which is normally delivered in PDF format via the webshop of Spot-Nordic here, or you can contact sms@spot-nordic.com and place your order and we will provide you with an invoice and instructions on how to pay, either with a wire transfer to our account or with a card (debit or credit). The SMS colour palettes can also be delivered in png or jpg format. Please be sure to request this when you order, otherwise the default format is PDF, as mentioned.

If you are not sure that you can use our SMS colours as described here below in your work, you can try using our first 500 colours (v3) - free of charge. You can download all 3 SMS colour palettes and see for yourself the visual difference between them, before you decide which one(s) you want and which you don't want. They are at the top of this page.

Just right click and download and then follow the instructions here below to take them for a spin - or optionally get the step-by-step guide to learn how to use SMS colours in design.

Please contact sms@spot-nordic.com and let us know if you have a problem using our colours and we will do our best to help you solve it.

SMS colours are suited for use in all major professional Graphics Applications in the market, including Adobe apps, Affinity and CorelDraw.

For SMS orders we need the following information:

Company name/customer/user name
Field of business (Designer/Brand Owner/Printshop/Manufacturer/Other)
Contact name
Contact email for invoicing
Contact email for orders
Contact mobile phone
Invoicing address
Shipping address

Keep in mind that if you want to see the precicely correct SMS colours on your monitor, the monitor must be capable of displaying the entire sRGB colourspace, - and it has to be calibrated. The same of course goes for your printer - and any output device or printing press.
These devices and machines must be calibrated or adjusted to output colour to standards. 

This is not a novelty so no need to panic. This is as obvious as needing to mix Pantone colours using the right Pantone base inks in the right amount - and then printing the Pantone colour with the correct amount on the right paper, - otherwise the resulting colour will be incorrect.

2. Once you have received your SMS file, open your SMS colour palette in Adobe Photoshop.

In our example let's say you ordered the P20 colour palette in sRGB format.

- Select sRGB as your working space.

- Open the PDF file.

- Pick out the SMS colour patches (SMS colourcubes) you want to use and copy them into a separate (new) document.

Like this.

Now save your chosen SMS colours as png or jpg, which you can import into your application. We recommend you embed the sRGB profile with the file - to be on the safe side.

NOTE: If you are designing a website and you don't happen to have an EyeDropper Tool, you can always pick up the HEX values of your chosen SMS colours in Photoshop and simply enter them to create the swatches in your app.

However, in our example, we are going to start by designing everything - website, letterheads, envelopes, business cards and leaflets in sRGB format suited for Internet viewing, since our customer is in another country and we are on a deadline (and would like to save ourselves the cost of printing out proofs and mailing them overseas).

Working with curves (Illustrator, Indesign, Affinity Designer, CorelDraw etc.)

Here is just a simple example that gives you an idea of what your workspace might look like.

Open the application you want to use for your job.

Be sure to select sRGB as your RGB colourspace before you get started.

Create a new document.

Import/place your colours in sRGB format to your workspace. Place them either inside our outside the working area, depending on whether you want your customer to see his actual SMS colours - or not.

Here we have some curves, some text and one bitmap image - in sRGB format. This is a simple suggestion of how, what you send to your customer could look like. The job - lets say this is an M-65 envelope is simply outlined with a box, - but that's just a suggestion, not a requirement. The SMS colourcubes are in this case included with the softproof in their original bitmap format.

Use the EyeDropper tool to add the SMS colours to your colour palette/swatches within your working space - like here below:

This is possible in most mainstream applications for design such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Indesign, Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer and CorelDraw. It is even easy to use the SMS sRGB colours in Microsoft Powerpoint if you are concerned about the colour of your slideshows.

In this case we used good old Macromedia Freehand - see example here above.

If you have a problem using SMS colours in your application, please contact sms@spot-nordic.com and we will do our best to assist you, even if you need a work-around.

- Finish your job and safe it and then save a copy as "name_of_your_choice_web_version" as jpg or png with the sRGB profile embedded in the case of web graphics, PDF if you are working for print (and don't forget to use high resolution images for print).

In the case of web/sRGB format, email the file or publish it online for your customer's visual approval. Keep in mind that since the colours are in this case sRGB format, your customer should in most cases be able to make up his or her mind by viewing your creation on his or her (sRGB) smartphone or tablet.

Do it Yourself - instructions on how to create jobs using SMS colours - from A-Z.

If you don't want to start by creating your job in web (sRGB) format to show to your customer but would rather like to go right to designing for print - and then print out your proofs to show to your customer, you can either order your SMS colours for CMYK from Spot-Nordic, order the Fogra 39 version of your SMS colour palette ready for print - or you can convert your SMS colours yourself to your Print colourspace(s) in a few easy steps- see instructions on how to do that here. 

Included in this presentation are instructions on how to locate the closest Pantone colour(s) to your SMS colour(s), - which can be useful if Pantone spot colours are an essential part of your visual brand identity.

For best visual on-screen likeness of SMS colours, users of SMS colours and their customers/decision makers should get a good calibrator for their display.

Screen calibrators are available from several vendors for a few hundred Euros - available for most displays from standard digital monitors down to smartphone displays.

Recommended calibrators for professional work are for instance the Calibrite/Xrite or Spyder bundles from Datacolor. Calibration should be done approx. every 7-14 days to keep your display correct.

Some customers may prefer to order a certified SMS ticket or even a colour proof with their complete brand identity proposal for final approval, which can be ordered from Spot-Nordic - see www.spotmatchingsystem.com/services - contact sms@spot-nordic.com for a quote. 

On approval of your job, get your CMYK colours, switch your colour settings to CMYK using the requested CMYK icc profile and the RGB colourspace and settings you are used to using (for instance Adobe RGB).

Now you can simply save a copy of your print documents under another name, import the CMYK colour bitmap to your workspace and use the EyeDropper to replace your web colours with the SMS CMYK colours and name them for instance SMS J-12 F51, if you are going to print according to Fogra 51.

Remember to replace the 72dpi image(s) with at least 300 dpi image(s) and save the job in PDF format for printing with the CMYK icc profile embedded to be on the safe side.

Make sure that CMYK colours in your document should not be converted in any way by your Printer. The CMYK halftones are ready for print as they are. If there are RGB images within your layout, in addition to the SMS colours, those should however be subject to conversion to CMYK by your Printer.

Please view this presentation where we show you exactly step-by-step how to select your SMS colourpalette, how to set up your workspace and how to convert your SMS colours - from your sRGB colours to industry standard CMYK colours, for both coated and uncoated paper.

Using SMS colours in Website Design (using HEX codes)

If you want to use the SMS colour(s) to write text in web design apps - for instance headlines, you can safely use the HEX value of any SMS colour you are working with in most applications. Just grab it from Photoshop or whatever application you are working in.

For instance if you want to use the actual colour of our sample magenta - I-12 for headlines on our website, the HEX value of that colour is #ca5994

If we use it in a headline, it looks like this:

  HEADLINE  using #ca5894, - the HEX value of SMS I-12.

It is very important for new SMS users to understand that the SMS ticket (P6) here above is not just a digital copy of the printed ticket for evaluation of the layout. It is in fact a colour correct digital version of the printed ticket in sRGB format. The reason the colour is visually correct is that it is common amongst the sRGB colourspace and the Fogra 51/Fogra 52 colourspaces used in for instance offset printing to ISO standards.

If your monitor is correctly calibrated to sRGB, this is exactly what the printed contract proof should look like, should you decide to invest in one - and consequently should you want to print this ticket in CMYK at your Printers, - these are exactly the colours you should expect.

The simplest way to think about SMS colours is to think of them as absolute colours. They are not supposed to change visually, as long as you (as a Designer) and your Printer follows instructions on how to use them.

Using SMS colours in Graphic Design

Examples

Keep in mind that although we just use 1 - 3 SMS colours in our examples here below, you can of course use as many SMS colours you want for your jobs.

SMS Solids and Gradients - working with bitmaps

In this example we picked the colours SMS J-12 and SMS G-12 for the logo.

If your application enables it, add your SMS colours to your colour palette and name them - SMS A-12 web, SMS G-12 web and SMS J-12 web. Select your colours from this colour palette in your design process. The above examples are done in Photoshop, which does not enable adding and replacing colours in this way, but this is for instance possible if you are working in Adobe Indesign or Illustrator - see https://tech4pub.com/2020/11/14/indesign-tip-find-and-change-colors/ for Indesign and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxyZmvcx5oU for changing colours in Adobe Illustrator.

We could strictly speaking have just picked the colour SMS J-12 and then used 70% layer opacity, to achieve a colour similar to SMS G-12.

Transparency however has been known to cause problems in output for printing, so the safer approach is to simply pick the SMS colours you want to use, if you don't need to use transparency to achieve a certain effect in your creation.

In our example, we also created a smooth gradient with colours ranging from SMS A-12 to SMS J-12, which is why we needed to add the SMS A-12 to the job because when it comes to printing your colours in CMYK, you need to order a CMYK version of each SMS colour that you actually use in your layout, - including the "from" and "to" colours used for gradients, and replace the sRGB colours with CMYK colours.

This is necessary in order to keep your complete range of SMS colours exactly correct when we transpose them from one media to another - for instance from web to print or television.

If you are feeling adventurous and want to do something completely unique using gradients, you can do  that with SMS colours.

The same rule applies here: If you want to be able to reproduce your SMS gradient correctly in all media, you need to keep track of your SMS colours and your gradient settings.

Here we have used 3 standard SMS colours to create a unique headline.

In this case, the colours between the chosen SMS colours are of course completely new colours - not named SMS colours. These new colours you yourself have created are as safe as the SMS colours on each side.

Just be sure not to use any colours but SMS colours to define your gradient, and you will be able to keep your creation colour consistent/fixed visually in any media.
If you pick a random black colour instead of the SMS black (J-42), there will be a visual difference between different media, so please be careful.

If you would like to use an SMS gradient for a brand logo, that is not a problem.

SMS Transparency / fixed SMS colour overlays for photographs

In the above example we decided to use transparency so we picked the full colour SMS J-12 and applied it with 70% opacity on top of a b/w image we wanted to use.

In this case the SMS J-12 is in fact the only SMS colour we need to do the job, while SMS G-12 is of course the resulting colour laid on top of the image.

A more typical example where a designer or a photographer might want to consider adding an SMS Colour overlay - possibly even to the entire visual brand identity of a customer, would be if it was decided that all his official material should look "old", always and everytime.

Traditionally in order to make images seem old, so called duotone technique has been used, where you typically print the image with black (K) and a brownish spot ink.

But with SMS colours you can achieve a similar effect, and it will cost you nothing extra at the Printers, - like this:

Here we simply picked our very own standard SMS J-44 and applied it at 30% on top of the image and at 10% on the background. 

It is possible to apply effects such as grain in addition at your discretion but in that case you have to keep track of the effect settings, if you intend to use it regularly.

You may ask yourself now, why you need SMS to do this, something that you have done many times all by yourself. 
The answer is that if you use our SMS colours, you can keep your photographs colour consistent across print, online and Television, - including the final colour of the effects for side-by-side visual comparison between printing on coated paper, printing on uncoated paper, web and TV. 

This does not mean that a photograph may not be allowed to "pop" - for instance in printing on gloss coated paper. You may take advantage of the full colour gamut of gloss coated paper for a photograph, while maintaining colour consistency in the overlay colour and effects you may choose to apply to your image in all media for a uniform visual experience!

If requested, we can even take full colour images and adjust them in such a way that they will never change visually, whether they are printed on coated paper or uncoated paper, displayed online or on TV. This may be useful for some photographs intended to be used as a part of a brand identity - or perhaps simply because the photographer would like his image to look the same, wherever people see it - in any media.

For instance, the image here below has been processed to remain consistent in accordance with our original SMS Standard colour palette - on white coated or uncoated paper, online and on TV. The 3 SMS colour patches in the lower left corner show that this image is appropriate to be used along with colours from the original SMS colour palette, - and we can easily check if the colours of the image are correct or if they have changed.

To be 100% sure that we will be able to keep your image and your artwork uniform visually within our colourspaces, once you are finished with it, you should send a master version in full resolution (bitmap) and sRGB format to sms@spot-nordic.com so we can run a few tests on it to be sure that no part of your design is outside our colour gamuts. If an effect for instance drops outside our gamuts, we will adjust the effect slightly to move it inside our gamuts and send you back a new master.

Switching from your old brand colours to SMS

If you already have an established logo and you are not going into a re-branding process, you can still switch to SMS in many cases, for increased consistency in colour cross-media, without anyone probably noticing that you made a switch, except perhaps your Printshops, that now have to print to international standards.

If you are simply annoyed by constant colour fluctuations every time you see your logo, there is simple way to do this:

If you are happy with the current web version of your logo but unhappy with how it performs and compares in print for instance, you can simply open your own sRGB format web logo and see if any of the standard SMS colours are visually similar to your current colours. You can use your Eye Dropper tool to compare your current web colours and our SMS web colourcubes. Remember to use the sRGB colourspace here, as before.

Try replacing your old colours with new SMS colours (using the same method of first placing the SMS colourcubes within the master document of course) and if you are happy with the outcome for online viewing, replace the old colours in all versions used for online viewing.

If you find suitable SMS colours to replace your current web colours, you might want to consider ordering an A4 SMS colour ticket sheet of the new colours, - if you want to be 100% sure that you want to make the switch to SMS - see below.
You may even want to order a printed proof of your new logo.

As close as our sRGB colours are to the printed versions of our colours, the printed SMS colours on paper are the master proof, since displays can be slightly different, especially if they have been adjusted by the user - or if they have "drifted", which happens to all displays with time.
As mentioned here above, to view SMS sRGB colours as correctly as possible, your monitor should be able to display the entire sRGB gamut - and it should be calibrated at least every 2 weeks.

A really good idea, once you receive the SMS colour tickets, is to adjust your display (monitor, laptop, smartphone etc.) so that it simulates the colours on the SMS colour ticket. 

The correct lighting condition to view our SMS colour tickets is normal daylight - D50.

If you are a perfectionist, you may prefer to send us the current logo in sRGB format, along with a list of the colours that you have been using until now as your reference brand colours (preferably create colourcubes for us within the document - we like our cubes).

We will send you brand new custom SMS colourcubes which are as close as we can get to your old colours, while still keeping them within our SMS colour gamut - the SMS gamut of your choice - the Standard, ECO or MAX gamut.

3. Getting ready to print your SMS colours, in offset, digital, flexo or gravure

a) You would only like to replace your SMS sRGB web colours with SMS CMYK colours:

If you are a non-subscriber, please contact your Printer/Manufacturer to find out which Print Standard is required for your job.
If you order 3 SMS CMYK colour variations or more, we can contact your Printer/Manufacturer on your behalf to find this out - and consequently which CMYK icc profile you should use when you prepare the job for printing.

This service is also included if you are an SMS subscriber and so are all 3 sRGB SMS colour palettes (value €180).

Simply send us the email address and name of who ever is in charge of these things at your Printers, along with the request for the CMYK colours and information on what substrate / what type of paper you want to use for your job.

The price pr. SMS CMYK colour variation is €30 pr. colour, so if we stick to our example here above, the price for those 3 SMS colours for the first standard you need is €90.  The good news is that if you should need to use those SMS colours for another type of paper = another print standard later, the price for all 3 colours will only be €60, because we will turn your 3 colours into one SMS BLOCK, - which looks something like this:

Here to make sure no mistakes are made, the user can see that the icc profile to be used when working with these colours is the ISO COATED v2 profile. The papertype to be used is Fogra 51 and the Print Standard of the Printer should be Fogra 39.

In general it is highly suggested to use the same papertype as the print standard (Fogra 51 paper and the Printer outputs and prints the job to Fogra 51 etc.) - but this sometimes happens and we can adapt our SMS colours to these circumstances by tweaking the colours a little bit.

Read more about our smart and economical SMS BLOCKS here.

As soon as we know both the substrate type and Print Standard of your Printer, we will send you the SMS CMYK variations of your requested SMS colours.

Lets say that you chose bright, white, coated paper to print your job which is consistent with the white point of Fogra 51, - and your Printer has requested that you use the PSO Coated v3 icc profile to set up your job:

We will then send you your SMS CMYK colours with the PSO Coated v3 icc profile embedded.

Create your own SMS colours

If you are willing to take responsibility for converting your sRGB or REC colours to CMYK, you can safe yourself the cost of buying CMYK variations or any other variations for that matter from Spot-Nordic.

The colours you get in this case will almost always be made up of 4 colours - CMYK, while SMS CMYK colours ordered from Spot-Nordic are often made up from fewer process colours. You can get consistent colours cross media by converting your sRGB or Rec. 709/2020 colours yourself to CMYK.

Here is how you do that: