A spot color on your screen is a spot color for the printer. No matter
how it looks.




To expand on that a little, all specifying a spot color does is generate a separate printing plate that is not part of the CMYK process. There is nothing magic, or sacrosanct about the color that plate will produce (as opposed to what happens when you combine the C, M, Y and K inks to simulate other colors). It will produce color that matches whatever the printer loads onto the press in that position.

You specify spot colors in ID for two reasons: to generate the plate and make sure that all objects that should be are the same color, and to give you an APPROXIMATION on screen of what the color will look like in print.

There are some spot colors that can be represented quite well in a monitor's RGB gamut, but many others which cannot, and you should never make a choice about what spot color to use based on the screen appearance -- that's why they make swatch books, and your printer will ALWAYS compare his printed product to the swatch book to be sure he is on target, not your screen or even your inkjet proof.

Peter