If You’re Monkeying around with Print Media in Photoshop

One thing that you do find in the Color Picker that is absent from the Color Palette is the ability to select custom colors, which are also known as spot colors. Spot colors are premixed inks used in printing and manufactured by various companies such as Pantone or Trumatch. You can use spot colors in addition to or in lieu of CMYK colors in the printing process. To pick a custom color, follow these steps:

1. Click the Custom button in the Color Picker dialog box.
The Custom Colors dialog box opens.

2. Choose your desired custom color book from the pop-up menu and then select your color from the scrolling list of swatches.

3. Click OK to accept the color as your new foreground or background color, or click the Picker button to return to the Color Picker.
Do not choose spot colors visually; choose them from a printed swatch book published by the ink manufacturer. The books, which provide the numeric values for each spot color, provide a true representation of how the color will appear when printed.

During the RIP (raster image processing) — the process your image goes through to create color separations for printing — Photoshop converts custom colors to CMYK for every image mode (except Duotone), unless you create spot color channels.